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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Chap. Copyright No. 

Shell,: 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SATURDAY AFTERNOON; 

OR, 

CONVERSATIONS 



FOR THE 



Culture of the Christian Life 



BY 

WAYLAND HOYT, D. D., 

Author of "Hints and Helps for the Christian Life" "Present Lessons 

from Distant Days" " Gleams from Paul's Prison" "Along 

the Pilgrimage" " The Brook in the Way" "Light 

on Life's Highway " etc., etc. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 
1420 Chestnut Street. 






5G?27 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1889, by the 

American Baptist Publication Society, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED 











ScC J„D COPY, 



I. 



TO THE 

NUMEROUS FRIENDS 

WHO FOR SO MANY 

SATURDAY AFTERNOONS 

HAVE GATHERED TO LISTEN TO 

THESE CONVERSATIONS 

THIS SHEAF OF THEM 

IS DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



It fell out in this way : I had been thinking much of 
the importance of the nurture of the Christian life, and 
had been wondering how I, as pastor, might specially 
minister to it. Sunday sermons were too formal, and 
the usual prayer meetings were too fragmentary. I was 
longing for some service which should make Christian 
experience its undivided focus. Announcing such a 
service, and inviting any to come who cared to, I was 
immediately surprised to find how wide and deep a need 
was met. Thus it became a habit of my ministry to 
devote an hour of the Saturday afternoon^ of the winter 
season to such duty. I always called these gatherings 
"Conversations," that I might indicate their entirely 
informal character. What I said was extemporaneous, 
and of the nature of a conversation. My dear friend, 
the Rev. Dr. H. L. Wayland, the editor of the National 
Baptist, was kind enough to think what I was saying 
worth reporting for his valuable paper. To him, to Miss 
Lydia S. Richards, to Miss Burmeister, I am entirely 

5 



3 PREFACE. 

indebted for the remaining of my word. I have been 
often asked to throw these Conversations into a volume. 
By the generous permission of Dr. Wayland I am 
enabled to do so. Out of many I have selected these. 
If, in the least, these shall soothe or gird a single 
Christian heart, I shall be devoutly thankful. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Grace and Peace, 9 

II. Strength for Harassed Christians, . 20 

III. As Much as We Are Willing to Ke- 

CEIVE, 31 

IV. Submission, 46 

V. Dreading, 60 

VI. God's Kemedy for Care, 69 

VII. The Cure for Heart-sinking, .... 80 

VIII. The Unspeakable Gift, 97 

IX. God Mine, 110 

X. What Christ is to Us, 121 

XI. Union with Christ, 133 

XII. The Certainty of Divine Help, . . . 149 

XIII. An Ancient Christian's Thought of 

Christ, 165 

XIV. Our 44 Dakeel," 179 

XV. Paul's 44 Can," 189 

XVI. Walking with God, 202 

XVII. Conquering Circumstances, 211 

XVIII. My Times Are In Thy Hand, 221 

XIX. What We Are and Have, ..... 230 

XX. The Cup of Salvation, , . 238 

XXI. Holden Eyes, 248 

XXII. The Kingdom Coming with Power, . . 263 

XXIII. How to Triumph Over Evil, 272 

XXIV. The Tomb of Jesus, 280 

XXV. Strength in Our Soul, 289 

7 



SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 



I. 

GRACE AND PEACE. 

GRACE and Peace, not one alone, but both, 
God gives, for in the New Testament they 
are constantly associated. Paul's salutations are 
always of this sort, " Grace to you, and peace." 
I am sure there is a great amount of help to each 
of us in these two words, and in the joining of 
them together. Grace is God's attitude toward 
us, and Peace is the result in us — the way we 
may feel toward God. 

Then let us think just a moment of this word 
Grace, which is expressive of the divine attitude 
toward us. Etymologically, the word means 
blessing-full. And so it comes to me as a thought 

of brightness, of gift, and of help, all of which 

9 



10 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

may be well included in such a beautiful word 
as Grace. 

Doddridge used to write hymns, and append 
them to his sermons. In that church of his at 
Northampton, in England, many of our sweetest 
hymns were born. You will remember that 
hymn on grace, and I am sure it tells the Scrip- 
ture truth about it : 

Grace, 'tis a charming sound, 

Harmonious to the ear ; 
Heaven with the echo shall resound, 

And all the earth shall hear. 

Grace first contrived the way 

To save rebellious man ; 
And all the steps that grace display 

Which drew the wondrous plan. 

Grace led my roving feet 

To tread the heavenly road ; 
And new supplies each hour I meet, 

While pressing on to God. 

Grace all the work shall crown 

Through everlasting days ; 
It lays in heaven the topmost stone, 

And well deserves the praise. 

For, according to the Scriptures, it was Grac e 



GRACE AND PEACE. 11 

that bringeth salvation. " Even when we were 
dead in sins, he hath quickened us together with 
Christ (by grace ye are saved)," " For the grace 
of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to 
all men." This scheme of salvation sprang not 
out of man toward God, but out of God toward 
man. God conceived the w r ay : he gives his Son. 

It is superabounding Grace. u Moreover, the 
law entered, that the offence might abound. 
But where sin abounded grace did much more 
abound." From Augustine down men have 
puzzled themselves with the question, " Why did 
sin enter the world ? " But I am sure that out 
of sin God shall manifest a shining love and 
glory; for God will overrule it all, and cause 
his light to stream more radiantly through the 
darkness. 

This grace of God is a source of Strength to 
us. One said to me last night : " I would be a 
Christian, if I were sure that I could hold out." 
I said to him : " If one should come to you, and 
say, i I guarantee you an income of twenty thou- 
sand dollars a year/ would you ask him if you 
could be assured of food and clothing and all 



12 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

necessaries? And don't you believe Christ's 
grace will supply you with a strength you need ? 
All you need to do is to put your trust in him. 
' But by the grace of God I am what I am; and 
his grace which was bestowed on me was not in 
vain ; but I labored more abundantly than they 
all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was 
with me/ Are you not sure there is for you in 
God's grace resource for every necessity, help for 
every burden ? It shall not be provided for you 
all at once. ' And of his fulness have all w T e 
received, and grace for grace.' " 

Sometimes you get the grace of Patience; 
sometimes of Endurance ; sometimes of Energy ; 
sometimes of Love; and, finally, grace to die. 
God gives us "grace for grace," which means 
grace instead of grace. You now need grace to 
perform your present duties well. In sickness 
you will need the grace of patience and the grace 
of resignation. As you need, it shall be mani- 
fested — " grace instead of grace." 

This grace is the source of our Hope. "A 
good hope through grace." Why should not we 
hope when God is in such grace toward us? His 



GBACE AND PEACE. 13 

benediction is upon us. We may say with the 
Psalmist, " The Lord is my shepherd/' therefore 
" I will not fear." 

And, then, if because of any perplexity, or be- 
cause of any tangle of paths into which your feet 
may be brought, or because of any darkness 
which overshadows, you should ever be tempted 
to doubt that this is God's feeling toward vou, 
then always fall back upon that proof of God's 
love, in giving our Saviour — the death of our 
Lord upon the cross. " But God commendeth 
his love toward us. in that, while we were yet 
sinners, Christ died for us." 

Christ came to live in our nature, to set us an 
example, and to make expiation for us upon the 
cross. u Herein is love, not that we loved God, 
but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the 
propitiation for our sins." Come softly into the 
house where Death has entered. There has been 
smitten out of the mother's arms a little child. 
There it lies in the coffin wrapped about with 
flowers ; flowers so helpless — in no place so help- 
less as around a coffin. The mother cannot un- 
derstand such a providence. " Why should my 



14 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

child be taken, my only one ? Over the way is 
a house full of children ; why should not one of 
them be taken, not mine?" As a mother once 
said, looking sadly at a poor boy hobbling 
through the street on crutches: "Why should 
my boy, just his age, so well formed, so perfect, 
have been taken ? If God must take one, why 
not this deformed one, not mine? How can he 
be loving and gracious, yet do this thing?" 

We can only see a little; God sees much. We 
can only see an inch; God sees through the 
eternities. God has translated the child into the 
celestial gardens " where angels walk and seraphs 
are the wardens," and in our loneliness we can 
only be absolutely sure that God's attitude toward 
as in all this is grace. 

Go to the cross ; see Jesus hanging on it, and 
remember he was God, my brother, and at the 
same time my Lord ; and in that utmost sacrifice 
of God there is the proof that God's mood toward 
us is that of love. 

Many and many a time, in my pastoral work, 
when I have seen one thrust into singular and 
terrible affliction, I myself have been obliged to 



GRACE AND PEACE. 15 

go back to this absolute proof of God's love- 
Christ's heart broken for us. 

And Peace is the result of this attitude of God 
toward us. Peace is the bloom of grace, because 
through grace we have the forgiveness of our 
sins. By the power of the Holy Spirit I see that 
I am awry with God ; I am wrong with him ; I 
am estranged from him. I remember how I 
cannot go back into the time an hour ago, and 
change what was in it. Have you ever thought 
how strangely time comes to us ? It flows into 
the present moment, and we do something, and 
that something is fixed, and we cannot change it. 
And so of all the past ; and when we think of it, 
and of ourselves as out of relation with God, and 
then remember that Christ bore our sins in his 
own body on a tree, what peace comes into our 
heart. 

Grace is peace in us because it is restoration 
of Inward Harmony, the restoration of spiritual 
health. n For to be carnally minded is death ; 
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." 

When my sin is put away, then I am restored 
to a right condition with myself. Where was 



16 SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 

disharmony now is harmony, and I am once 
again settled in God, am centred; I am in the 
right relation, and that relation is inward peace. 

This is seen again and again in the household. 
A child is naughty ; she is stubborn. You can- 
not manifest your love to her. She is out of her 
true relation with you. Then she repents ; she 
comes to you and makes a confession, and you 
forgive. The child's relation is restored, and she 
is at peace. 

Because of this grace, there blooms in us the 
peace of Freedom from Fear. "Casting all 
your care upon him, for he careth for you." "Be 
careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer 
and supplication with thanksgiving let your 
requests be made known unto God. And the 
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, 
shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ 
Jesus." 

This grace also manifests itself in the peace of 
Ease of Service. It is always the peace within 
that makes the peace outside. If I am con- 
sciously out of harmony with God, and so out of 
harmony with myself, I cannot well perform the 



GRACE AND PEACE. 17 

duties that come to me. I have not, in Miss 
Waring's beautiful words, 

"A heart at leisure from itself, 
To soothe and sympathize." 

If in harmony with God and myself, I do not 
have to think of myself, but am at leisure to 
think only of my duty. 

Also, out of this grace of God blooms for us 
the peace of Patience in Tribulation. And let 
us here think what tribulation etymologically 
means. Picture an Oriental threshing-floor upon 
which is spread the grain. The tribulum is a 
heavy piece of wood, a kind of slab, the under 
part of which is set with nails. Oxen drag the 
tribulum over the floor, breaking away the husks 
from the imprisoned kernel. 

So we may hope that tribulation is breaking 
away the evil from us, and leaving what is best 
and highest, and so we can be patient. But let 
us always bear in mind the distinction between 
tribulation and punishment. God never pun- 
ishes Christians. Christians are thrust under 
the tribulum, and, when sure of God's grace, we 

B 



18 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

may be patient under tribulation, because we 
know it is only tribulation ; it is not punishment. 
It is but the breaking away of the chaff from the 
golden grain. 

Then through grace there comes to us the peace 
of forgiveness, the peace of inward health, the 
peace of fearlessness, the peace of ease of ser- 
vice, and the peace of patience under tribulation. 

But how can we have this peace? Let us 
think not of ourselves, but of God in Christ. 
Baxter said when he first became a Christian he 
gave ten looks at himself and one look at Christ; 
but after a great deal of darkness and trouble he 
gave ten at Christ and one at himself. 

There was a young man who desired to enlist 
in one of the militia regiments. His father feared 
he might be overcome by the temptations ; but 
the son said: "I will promise you that I will 
absolutely never take a drop of liquor so long as 
I am a member of the regiment." And the 
mother said: "If ever, under a stress of tempta- 
tion, you should be raising a glass to your lips, 
then look across it and you will see your mother's 
face." The young man was, near the close of 



GRACE AND PEACE. 19 

his service, one day with some companions who 
were drinking, and who urged him, "because it 
was the end of their association," to take just this 
one glass. He was just raising it to his lips, when 
he did, as he really thought, see his mother's face 
across the glass. Then, dashing it away from 
him, he said, " I cannot" 

Keep your eye on Jesus Christ, and you will 
get such a vision of God's grace as will bring 
peace to your heart. 

Let us be careful to obey ; and " whatsoever 
we eat and whatsoever we drink, let us do all to 
the glory of God " ; " He that doeth his will shall 
know of the doctrine." 

Then, last of all, let us expect peace. We have 
a right to expect it. How much there is in 
God's grace ! It is " exceedingly abundant, 
above all that we can ask or think." I wish we 
were all Christians who were determined to get 
just as much out of religion as we possibly could. 
There is for all of us God's grace, and so there 
is for all of us a sweet and shining peace. 



II. 

STRENGTH FOR HARASSED CHRIS- 
TIANS. 

A PERSON was climbing the Alpine heights, 
when he saw a flower blooming in a crevice 
amid drifts of snow. He wondered how the 
flower could get strength to bloom in such a 
frozen, barren spot. On examination he found 
that a tiny white rootlet stretched out to a patch 
of soil amid the snow drifts, and thence drew 
nourishment for the plant. 

As we confront a new year, and think of the 
burdens, cares, and shadows that will rest on us, 
and, still more, of the struggles of the better na- 
ture against evil, we ask : " How shall I get 
through ? In the past I have made many mis- 
takes. Can I not do better in the year to come, 
be more victor, and have more of the shining 
in my heart?" Where are we going to find 
strength for this? We need, like the flower, 
20 



STRENGTH FOR HARASSED CHRISTIANS. 21 

some peculiar resource. Can we find it? We 
have about us unfavorable circumstances ; there is 
always a place where the harness rubs. We are 
in the plight of the little flower ; but if we bloom 
at all, it must be where we are. 

As our children grow older, they are more and 
more a burden to the parents. " What shall I 
do with him? How shall I lead him?" You 
have lain awake of nights thinking of all this. 
The time of constraint has ceased, and there be- 
gins the time of sympathy and advice. We 
wonder how the child we love is going to master 
this or that temptation. 

Then there comes to us a consciousness of lone- 
liness. If we were but helped by those about us, 
we could get on better. A minister feels as 
though he had the laboring oar, as though there 
were a lack of moral and spiritual support. 
You are often in want of sympathy. There is 
the chilling influence of a great strain. We have 
to keep always at the straining point. We feel 
that we have got to keep this up all through life. 
It seems as if we had no strength, as if we had 
exhausted all our ability. 



22 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Then there are our easily besetting sins. We 
keep our temper under for a time ; then it gets 
the better of us. So of our brooding and gloomy 
thoughts. We dispel them for a time, then they 
come again and cloud the sky. We wonder how 
in such circumstances and in such a plight we 
can expand the beautiful flower of the Christian 
life. 

Now, the Bible is given for just such harassed 
men and women as we. Turn, for example, to 
that marvelous Epistle to the Ephesians. If you 
have not become familiar with it, you can do no 
better thing for the new year than to read it over 
and over and over a dozen times. I do not know 
where there is better help for harassed Christians. 

We cannot now understand how hard it was 
then to be a Christian. There was the luxurious 
wicked city. There was the beautiful temple 
with its gorgeous worship. There were a few 
Christians gathered out of that vice and heathen- 
ism, seeking to live purely and nobly, while the 
whole influence was against them. If we are 
like that flower amid the snowdrifts, surely they 
were a great deal more so. 



STRENGTH FOR HARASSED CHRISTIANS. 23 

And now in the very first chapter, here is what 
Paul says to these Ephesians : " You are not left 
alone ; you will be helped." And then he says : 
"And what is the exceeding greatness of his 
power to usward who believe according to the 
workings of his mighty power, which he wrought 
in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, 
and set him at his own right hand in the 
heavenly places, far above all principality and 
power and might and dominion and every name 
that is named, not only in this world, but also 
in that which is to come, and hath put all 
things under his feet, and gave him to be the 
head over all things to the church." It is power 
like that into which we may thrust ourselves and 
be strong. It is power, exceeding great " and 
mighty." We are surrounded by the effects of 
the divine power. You are out at sea, on 
board the ship that seems big when in port, but 
which seems so tiny out on the waves that it is 
taken as if it were a cockle shell and tossed from 
wave to wave. You think how terrible if a 
storm should arise. You feel something of the 
power of the ocean. 



24 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

But it is not such an exhibition of power that 
we are directed to in the passage; it is the great 
exceeding might which God wrought in Christ 
when he raised him from the dead. The most 
tyrannical power in the world is death. You 
stand in some companionship which is precious 
to you ; you rejoice in it ; but the question arises, 
How long shall it last? The mother kisses her 
babe, but she cannot help thinking what if the 
little child were to lie in her arms chilled to 
death. At any rate, we press on unceasingly 
toward death. The last breath will be drawn. I 
sometimes think how strange it will be to be in 
a world where the great thought will be Life. 
Here the reigning thought is death. Life is the 
word that reigns in the Book of the Revelation. 
" He showed me a pure river of the water of life." 

Our Lord came into our world, and took our 
doom, and himself died. Death wielded its 
sceptre over him, as it will over you and me; 
but in Christ this mighty power is baffled. 
Death is victim, and Christ is victor. He died 
and then he rose, and that is the sort of power 
that is on our side, and that is to help us. 



STRENGTH FOR HARASSED CHRISTIANS. 25 

This thought is full of stimulus to me. I 
have one who has helped me, but he drops into 
the grave and leaves me. I have but his memory. 
But Christ was raised from the dead. This is 
resurrection power. It not only raised him, but 
it set him at God's right hand. In our nature, 
Christ died ; in our nature, was raised ; in our 
nature, he ascended, and sits on the highest 
throne. There is my nature crowned over all 
the works of the Creator. 

The great power which raised up Christ from 
the dead and set him at God's rio-ht hand has 
also subjected all to his rule, has " put all things 
under his feet." 

Here is a general passing through a conquered 
province; he makes requisitions for his army; 
it may be of cattle, or of grain, or of horses, or 
of money. It comes, for he has conquered the 
province, and no one can dispute him. 

So our Lord Christ has conquered creation 
and nature. Providence is at his command. All 
powers are under his feet; all that is in this 
world and in the world to come. You do not 
knew that you are helped by angels, but you are. 



26 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Every personality and power is facile to his 
touch. 

This power that is so strongly suggested in the 
passage is power in relation with every one of us ; 
for, " listen, ye trembling Ephesian Christians, 
this exceeding power is not away off at a distance, 
but is to usmard who believe." It is this power 
which we have, power that raised Christ from 
the dead, and has put him at God's own right 
hand, and has put all power under his feet. 

You may bloom even amid the snowdrifts, 
for there is power such as we cannot dream of. 
A Christian woman came to me, and said : " I 
do not know that I am a Christian ; I do not feel 
as I used." I said to her: "Look here, now, 
here is the New Testament ; read it over and 
and over, and when you find a passage that 
speaks of Christ and his power, and what he will 
do for you, mark it in the margin. Cease look- 
ing to yourself and look away to Christ." In a 
week she came again, and the peace of God was 
on her face. She had found that Jesus Christ 
was the reservoir of God's power. Yes, what we 
have to do is to " lay aside every weight and the 



STRENGTH FOR HARASSED CHRISTIANS. 27 

sin that doth so easily beset us," and to look 
away unto Jesus. Remember what is on our side. 
One who had taken on her the duty of visitation 
in this city felt that it was very difficult ; but 
she knelt down, and said : " Lord Jesus, this is 
all thine. Do thou go with me." She found 
that the paths that seemed filled with obstacles 
were cleared of the hindering stones. She looked 
back, and was surprised to see how easy it all 
had been. You see, she had drawn on Christ's 
pow r er. 

I remember how sick my heart felt when I 
came to leave home to go to college, a thousand 
miles away. I did not know how I should 
understand the strange studies and the strange 
surroundings. As I thought of it in the cars, I 
was appalled. Then I turned to my father, who 
was sitting by my side, and (without saying a 
word to him) I just thought, "Well, father is 
with me, and he will carrv me through." It 
seemed a hard thing to go to college; but what 
a good thing it was ! How could I have done 
my work but for it! So it will be. Our Lord 
Christ goes with us to do the difficult things. 



28 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Why should we not be strong Christians instead 
of being weak ones ? 

Paul Gerhard was a sweet singer, born in Sax- 
ony. He is the author of the well-known hymn, 
"Give to the winds thy fears." The hymn has 
twelve stanzas in the original, and five of them 
are in all our hymn books. There is a tender 
storv of how God is true to the faith in him of 
which the hymn sings. There was a German 
peasant who lived near Warsaw. His rent was 
unpaid, and the landlord was about to thrust 
him from his home. It was in the bitter winter 
weather, and though the poor man had thrice 
appealed for a little time to the landlord, the 
landlord was inexorable. The next day the 
helpless peasant was to find himself and his fam- 
ily homeless in the snow. What could they do 
but pray ? And then they all sang together the 
verses of Paul Gerhard's hymn of faith : 

11 Give to the winds thy fears ; 
Hope, and be undismayed ; 
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears, 
God shall lift up thy head." 

At length, singing on, they come to the verse: 



STRENGTH FOK HARASSED CHRISTIANS. 2S 

44 Nothing thy work suspending, 
No foe can make thee pause, 
When thou, thine own defending, 
Dost undertake their cause.' ' 

There was just then a rap upon the window. 
This German peasant's grandfather had trained 
a raven, as such birds can be trained, to do 
various things. It was this bird tapping against 
the window pane. The window was opened, and 
in flew the raven with a costly jeweled ring in 
his beak. The peasant took it at once to his 
minister, who identified it as the property of 
King Stanislaus the Beneficent, and to whom he 
gave it back. You can easily imagine how, 
when the king heard the whole story, there was 
no longer danger of rooflessness to the poor but 
trustful and honest peasant. Indeed, the king 
built him a new house, and gave him cattle from 
his own herds. And over the door of this house, 
on an iron tablet, stands still the effigy of a 
raven with a ring in his beak, and underneath 
are the first four suggestive lines of the beauti- 
ful stanza they were singing when help came so 
surprisingly : 



30 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

"All means always possessing, 
Invincible in might ; 
Thy doings are all blessing, 
Thy goings are all light." 

Of course, I do not mean to say that God will 
help yon always in a way so strange; but I do 
mean to say that God will help. Be sure of this: 

4 His doings are all blessing, 
His goings are all light. 

Let me read these great verses once again : 
"And what is the exceeding greatness of his 
power to us- ward who believe, according to the 
working of his mighty power, which he wrought 
in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, 
and set him at his own right hand in the heav- 
enly places, far above all principality and power 
and might and dominion, and every name that 
is named, not only in this world, but also in that 
which is to come. And hath put all things under 
his feet, and gave him to be the head over all 
things to the church." 



III. 

AS MUCH AS WE ARE WILLING TO 
RECEIVE. 

YOU remember the story of the staying of the 
oil. A prophet's widow was in trouble. 
Her husband's estate had turned out badly, and, 
after the fashion of the time, the creditors w 7 ere 
threatening to sell into bondage her two sons. 
In her extremity the widow makes application to 
Elisha. His question is, " What bast thou in the 
house?" ''Only a pot of oil," the distressed 
widow answers. Then the direction is that she 
borrow from her neighbors as many vessels as 
she can. She is to borrow not a few. And when 
she had gathered the vessels, and behind the shut 
door of her house began to pour into them from 
her single pot of oil, she found her supply of oil 
sufficient to fill all her borrowed vessels. Its 
sale would lift her beyond want. And it came 
to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to 

31 



32 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

her son : " Bring me yet a vessel." And he said 
unto her: "There is not a vessel more." And 
the oil stayed. But the oil did not stay as long as 
there were vessels to hold it 

The ancient story is full of the most real re- 
ligious uses. 

Lay this down as a fundamental principle for 
the Christian life : We may have just as much of 
the grace and help of God as we are willing to 
receive. If we are straitened, it is never in God, 
but always in ourselves. The oil stayed only 
when there were no more vessels to fill with it. 

Here is a most sweet poem of Faith I found 
to-day : 

Since the Father's arm sustains thee, 

Peaceful be. 
When a chastening hand restrains thee, 

It is he. 
Know his love in full completeness 
Fills the measure of thy weakness ; 
If he wound thy spirit sore, 

Trust him more. 

Without measure, uncomplaining, 

In his hand 
Lay whatever things thou canst not 

Understand ; 



ALL WE ARE WILL1KG TO RECEIVE. 33 

Though the world thy folly spurneth, 
From thy faith in pity turneth, 
Peace thy inmost soul shall fill, 
Lying still. 

Like an infant, if thou thinkest 

Thou canst stand, 
Childlike, proudly pushing back 

The proffered hand, 
Courage soon is changed to fear, 
Strength does feebleness appear ; 
In his love if thou abide, 

He will guide. 

Fearest sometimes that thy Father 

Hath forgot ? 
When the clouds around thee gather, 

Doubt him not. 
Always hath the daylight broken, 
Always hath he comfort spoken, 
Better hath he been for years 

Than thy fears. 

Therefore, whatsoe'er betideth 

Night or day, 
Know — his love for thee provideth 

Good alway. 
Crown of sorrow gladly take, 
Grateful wear it for his sake, 
Sweetly bending to his will, 

Lying still, 
c 



34 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

To his own thy Saviour giveth 

Daily strength ; 
To each troubled soul that liveth, 

Peace at length ; 
Weakest lambs have largest share 
Of this tender Shepherd's care ; 
Ask him not then " When ? ' ' or " How ? 

Only bow ! 

Well, you will say, " That is very beautiful," 
and I say, "It is beautiful;" and you will say, 
" It is the mood of faith," and I say, " It is the 
mood you ought to be in, and which we all may 
be in, if we will.'* Whatever may betide exter- 
nally, there should always be within us a sweet 
placidity ; there should always be such calmness 
as when Jesus spoke to the waves and said, 
"Peace, be still." It is not at all impossible 
that the Christian heart should be in steady day- 
light, though there be midnight inwardly. Bring 
Scripture promises as vessels, into which the grace 
of faith may be poured. 

For, notice just a moment, What is Faith? 
Well, it is this : It is something that must always 
have some object on which it can lay hold. You 
must have something to believe. There is no 



ALL WE ARE WILLING TO RECEIVE. 35 

such thing as faith unless you have something 
toward which faith turns. Two men were talk- 
ing together ; they were transacting a great 
business enterprise ; they were about to part, with 
certain details that must be done, and one said to 
the other, " I trust you for all this." This is the 
way of faith : that man could not have had faith 
if he had not faith in somebody. 

I often say to the deacons in my church : " I 
will trust you to attend to this," and it is always 
done. And so you see that faith is not any 
ecstasy into which we are to urge ourselves. I 
have said this to you a great many times ; but I 
do not believe you have learned the lesson yet. 
It is such a pestiferous idea that you cannot have 
(any faith unless you are caught up like Elijah. 
When people say, " We want more faith/' they 
think, *'I have to struggle and to introvert mv- 
self and to wonder if this feeling is right and 1! 
that feeling is right; and I must spend all night 
in prayer, and weep, and go through a terrible 
time to religious ecstacy." That is not faith. 

Will you also notice that faith must have not 
only an object on which to lay hold, but an object 



36 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

outside of ourselves. You may say to a roan, 
" Have faith in yourself." That is a good thing 
in certain directions, but not in religion. Sam- 
son had faith in himself, and he tumbled fear- 
fully. The prodigal son had faith that he could 
take care of his own property, and he " wasted it 
in riotous living." Then what is that on which 
faith is to lay grasp? It is simply and always 
the divine promises. We have great faith when 
we greatly lay hold of what God tells us. Have 
great experimental knowledge of God's word, 
and then you will know what God promises to 
do for you. 

I was riding with Mr. Spurgeon one day last 
summer, and he was telling me how the Lord 
constantly helped him. And he said: "I don't 
like to have things go too smoothly ; I like to 
have great burdens laid upon me." " Well," 
I said, " responsible as you are for one hundred 
thousand dollars a year, you seem as easy as if it 
were but a ha'penny." And he said : " I pray about 
it when any strait closes around me from which 
I must be delivered." And I said : "How do you 
pray ? " And he said : " I get a promise ; I find 



ALL WE ARE WILLING TO RECEIVE. 37 

one which is applicable to my case, and I plead 
that promise." Faith is not an awful spasm ; it 
is not a tremendous outcry ; it is quiet, because 
it has something on which it lays hold — that is, 
on what God has promised. 

And now the reason whv we do not have 
enough of the grace of faith is that we do not 
bring vessels enough. I say to a person who has 
become a Christian : " Well, you believe the 
Lord's promise? Here is this promise, ( Him 
that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out'; 
are you willing to confess Christ ? " " Yes ; I 
am willing." "And you do not hold anything 
back?" "No; I do not." "Well," I say, 
u here is this promise. ' I will not cast out ' ; do 
you believe it ? " " Yes ; I believe that." So 
this person brings the vessels of the Lord's 
promise, and the Lord pours into it the grace of 
faith, and he believes his sins forgiven. 

Many Christians stop right there ; they never 
get beyond the forgiveness of their sins. I know 
such Christians in this church. If one speaks, 
he always has a backward look. He says : "Ever 
so many years ago, I gave myself to Christ, and 



38 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

he forgave my sins." But he has only meagre 
faith, though he is a Christian, because he has 
never brought more than one vessel of promise. 
It is as if a baby should be born, and stay a baby 
always, though he should live to be a hundred 
years old. Lots of Christians whose heads are 
whitened toward the grave have never gone fur- 
ther than the forgiveness of sins. Just think of 
the rich promises for us besides that of forgive- 
ness. There is the promise of the divine in- 
dwelling : "I will not leave you comfortless; I 
will come to you." Suppose I take the vessels 
of this promise and believe- 
Then, also, there are Scripture promises con- 
cerning earthly care, a heavenly discipline, and 
that promise about " all things working together 
for good to them that love God." That "all 
things" means trouble with the servants in the 
kitchen ; the dust gathering quickly when you 
have just swept it away ; the beefsteak burned 
which you were preparing for your husband 
when he should come home. It means all the 
criss-cross, and the attrition, and bother; just 
like a mosquito that does not seriously wound, 



ALL WE ARE WILLING TO KECEIVE. HO 

but only irritates. Suppose, then, you bring the 
vessel of that promise, that the Lord may pour 
in his grace. 

Then there are promises concerning great ex- 
tremity, as, for instance, that promise : " Yea, 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with 
me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
Thy mace and thy crook. One who had just 
been to Palestine brought back a mace ; it was 
an oak club, into which were driven iron nails. 
It could deal a very tremendous blow, and was 
necessary, for the shepherd must be well armed. 
There is always the vulture hovering over the 
flock, and there are vipers which must be smitten 
down. There are banditti prowling around, who 
get their living by predatory raids on the shep- 
herd. 

Then " the rod " is the shepherd's crook. It 
is that with which he points out the way to the 
flock as he goes before it, with which he lifts 
over some gully the lamb too weak to go himself. 
" Thy defence and thy guidance are with me." 
That is the meaning of the rod and staff. 



40 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Well, you are in extremity ; it seems to you as 
if you were in the valley of the shadow of death. 
Then, what are you to do ? Bring the vessel of 
a Scripture promise like this. Do not strain and 
struggle and sweat. Look through this word of 
God and find a promise which exactly meets your 
case. If you knew the treasure God had inlaid 
for you in this word, you would have more faith ; 
for you would know more what you are to 
believe. Borrow, then, vessels of promise, that 
the Lord may fill them. Believe for the daily 
life, and believe for death that is coming to all 
of us. Borrow vessels of promises, and so into 
them will flow the grace of faith, and so you will 
be men and women of great faith. 

I was reading, some time since, in one of Dr. 
William Taylor's books, and there was this foot 
note : " He was going home from church when 
he was a boy in Scotland, and he asked his 
father what the minister meant when he spoke 
of ' appropriating faith/ His father answered : 
1 Just take your Bible, and when you come to 
any promise that just fits you, you just mark 
that promise; that is appropriating faith/ " 



ALL WE ARE WILLING TO RECEIVE. 41 

Then, also, let us bring vessels of service that 
we may have the grace of strength. That was a 
beautiful request that one made the other evening 
in the prayer meeting : " Pray for me that I may 
use the light I have/' The more she used the 
light she had, so much the more light she would 
have. One of the most fundamental passages for 
the Christian life is : " If any man will do his 
will, he shall know of the doctrine." 

I remember how I found that out ; I never 
shall forget it as long as I live. I do not sup- 
pose there was ever a fellow who, when he 
entered the ministry, had greener views than I 
had. For I said : " I shall do just what I please. 
I alwavs liked reading and studying; but I do 
not like this pastoral work, and I am not going 
to do it." I went on trying to refuse. I said : 
" I cannot do that," which meant " I will not 
do it." What a plight I was in ! I found there 
was this one to go and see, and that one to go 
and see; and I studied the Bible, and found it 
was full of pastoral work. I never shall forget 
the night I broke down. I fell on my knees, 
and said : " Lord, I will do it." And the next 



42 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

day I started out, and before night I was fond 
of it, and I have been fond of it ever since. 

Now, suppose I had not brought that vessel 
of service, should I ever have had my strength 
for service? Just in proportion as you briug 
vessels of service, you will have God's help ; you 
will not have his help beforehand. Ever so 
many people say : " We would do this thing if we 
were sure there was a magazine from which our 
vessels might be filled." But you will never 
have the grace of help unless you do what God 
wants. When you sing — 

41 The mistakes of my life have been many," 

you say : " Well, I am a very poor Christian, 
indeed." Well, so are we all ; but you need not 
be so poor as you are. The busiest man is the 
happiest man — he upon whom time does not 
hang heavily. Try it ; you bring the vessel of 
service, and into it will shortly be poured the 
grace of help. 

Another point : Bring the vessel of confes- 
sion that we may have the grace of shining. If 
you look through the Scriptures you will find 



AXL WE ARE WILLING TO RECEIVE. 43 

ever go many promises of inward light attached 
to our confessing Christ. Do you remember 
Ben-hadad besieged the capital of Samaria so 
closely that there was a terrible famine there, so 
that the mothers began to eat their children? 
And the Lord sent such a panic among the 
hoste of the Syrians that they arose and fled. 
And the lepers, who had been in trouble, saying : 
" If we go into the city, we shall die ; and if we 
go to the host of the Syrians, we cannot more 
than die, anyway," now began to eat ; and when 
they saw the great affluence everywhere, they 
said : " This is not good ; if we tarry until the 
morning, some mischief will come upon us; now, 
therefore, come, that we may go and tell the 
kind's household." Well, when a Christian has 
accepted Jesus Christ, and when he has seen the 
benefit of religion for his own soul, and yet shuts 
his mouth, as those lepers did, you may be sure 
he is blighted. I have seen many Christians 
who do not enjoy religion, having only just 
enough religion to make them wretched, and 
that is all. But bring the vessel of confession, 
and into it shall always be poured the grace of 



44 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

shining. Only this week I have seen this ex- 
emplified. I went to one, and said : " You 
believe in Christ absolutely ? " " Yes." " Well, 
then, will you confess it by just walking to the 
seat in front there ? " " No ; I cannot do that." 
A few days later I went to her, and said : " Don't 
you see that you are holding back something 
from the Lord when you refuse to confess him?" 
And she thought a moment, and said: "I will 
confess." Before the meeting closed I saw the 
shining in her face. You see we have just as 
much of God's grace and help as we are willing 
to take. May God grant that we bring vessels 
that we may have great measure of the oil of 
grace ! 

A poor, blind man was traveling one day ; 

The guiding staff from out his hand was gone, 
And the road crooked, so he lost his way ; 

And the night fell, and a great storm came on. 

He was not, therefore, troubled and afraid, 
Nor did he vex the silence with his cries ; 

But on the rainy grass his cheek he laid, 
And waited for the morning sun to rise ; 

Saying to his heart : " Be still, my heart, and wait, 
For if a good man happen to go by, 



ALL WE ARE WILLING TO RECEIVE. 45 

He will not leave us to our dark estate 
And the cold cover of the storm, to die. 

" But he will sweetly take us by the hand 
And lead us back into the straight highway ; 

Full soon the clouds will have vanished, and 
All the wide east be blazoned with the day." 

And we are like that blind man, all of us, 
Benighted, lost ; but while the storm doth fall 

Shall we not stay our sinking hearts up thus ? 
Above us there is One who sees it all. 

And if his name be Love, as we are told, 
He will not leave us to unequal strife ; 

But to that city with the streets of gold 
Bring us, and give us everlasting life. 

Not merely heaven will God give us. He 
has a great deal for us before we go to heaven. 
He has strength and shining. 



IV. 
SUBMISSION. 

ONE of the best illustrations of submission 
was given when David, after the death 
of his child, submitted to God. The child was 
very sick ; David sought earnestly that hi? life 
might be spared. Of course, he had used all 
the skill which the resources of a king could 
furnish ; then he gave himself to prayer and 
fasting, lying all night upon the ground in sup- 
plication. When the child had died, the court- 
iers, remembering that the king was so smitten 
at the mere fear of the child's death, dared not 
tell him. But he asked, "Is the child dead?" 
and they said, " He is dead." Then he arose 
and anointed himself and went to the house of 
God. Then he came to his own house and 
asked that meat be set before him. They, in 
great wonder, said : " We cannot understand. 
You have fasted and have wept when the child 
46 



SUBMISSION. 47 

was sick, and now that the child is dead you 
arise and eat." David said: "While the child 
was alive I fasted and wept; but now he is dead, 
wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back 
a^ain?" 

I would like to talk to you a little while as we 
wait together now of what submission is and of 
what submission will do for us. 

Submission is recognition of the divine au- 
thority. We are God's really; we are under 
ownership; we do not belong to ourselves; we 
belong to God by the right of creation, by the 
right of redemption, by the right of preservation, 
by all rights, we are God's property and not our 
own. There is over us a divine authority. We 
are under God's scepter. We come distinctly 
under his rule. 

Have you ever asked, "What is the essence 
of sin?" There is a distinction between the 
expression of sin, and its root or essence. Sin 
means essentially, and always is, selfishness or 
selfness — that is to say, the love of self-rule. It 
is at the direct antipodes from the divine au- 
thority. 



48 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

When our first parents, in the initial sin, ate 
the forbidden fruit, they then chose to do with- 
out God. This was the seed out of which all sin 
ever since has sprung. When we become Chris- 
tians, we recognize God's authority; we declare 
that we belong to him, and are under his rule. 

The divine authority asserts itself in many 
ways. One way is in that which is inevitable in 
our lives. There are certain inevitables in every 
life, and when these occur we may be sure that 
they are the expression of the divine authority 
in our lives. 

I remember how, in the Vale of Chamouni. I 
used to look at Mount Blanc, crown of the Alps, 
rearing itself far up into the blue. I saw that 
the other mountains scattered about this central 
one adjusted themselves to it; it adjusted itself 
to nothing. In every life there are things that 
stand out as inflexible and rocky as Mount Blanc. 
We cannot help them ; they are. But there are 
many things in our lives which we can change. 
Then we have a perfect right to change them. 
There is no virtue in penance. It is a Romish 
notion ; and is of the devil, not of the Scripture. 



SUBMISSION. 49 

When we can get out of the suffering, we have 
alwavs a right to do it. The fact of its change- 
ableness is a revelation of the divine will that 
we may change it. I think many of our trou- 
bles are needless troubles. A man said : " I had 
for five years to plough around a rock in my 
field, always thinking it such a large rock that it 
would take too much time and trouble to remove 
it. Then, accidentally, I found, to my surprise, 
that it was little more than two feet long." One 
said : " Then the first time you really faced your 
difficulty you conquered it." " Yes, and I be- 
lieve before we pray about them we had better 
look our troubles right in the face. For five 
vears I had been saving, 'I cannot do it'; vet 
the minute I faced it over it went." 

There are things in our lives that we can 
change. There are other things that are inevit- 
able; for instance, Byron's club foot; he was 
born with it ; he could not cure it ; it was inev- 
itable. 

Charles Lamb's sister's insanity was one of the 
inevitables in his life and her life. In all Eng- 
lish history, there is nothing more pathetic. I 



50 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

have visited the spot where he was born and 
where he lived. His sister was subject to sud- 
den seizures of insanity. He devoted himself 
through long years, with the utmost tenderness 
and self-sacrifice, to this sister. She besought 
him to put her in a straight jacket whenever 
these attacks should come; she was always fore- 
warned; he took her to the Retreat to remain 
while the paroxysm lasted. He accepted the 
inevitable. 

So, also, the death of Mrs. Helen Hunt's 
(" H. H.") child was one of the inevitables. You 
remember how broken-hearted she was and how 
bereaved. Her husband, while stationed in the 
Narrows in New York Harbor, met with an acci- 
dent, and was brought home dead. She had one 
boy in her home ; her heart was wrapped in him, 
and his heart wrapped in her. He was perhaps 
about fourteen vears old. He was taken sick, 
and, knowing that he must die, he demanded of 
his mother a promise that, in her loneliness and 
grief, she would not commit suicide. Simply 
because she had promised him, she did not com- 
mit suicide. Her sorrows opened in her a foun- 



SUBMISSION. 51 

tain of song which otherwise might never have 
been opened. The broken-hearted mother said : 
" God has done it, and since God has done it 
God has done it wisely." 

Then, also, a real submission is not simply a 
recognition of the divine authority and a trust in 
the divine wisdom ; but it is also a recognition 
of the fact that God has a concern with us in our 
daily lives. It is a faith in Providence. A 
friend said to me the other dav: Ci I want to 
show you something"; and when I looked 
through the tube of his microscope, I saw the 
most exquisite thing I ever saw in my life. 
There were beautiful stars, wonderful corusca- 
tions, and all so exquisite as to baffle all descrip- 
tion. It was nothing but mud, with the earthy 
matter cleaned away by some acid, leaving only 
the silicious particles. I did not wonder that 
my friend said to me: "Such a sight as this once 
made one who was an infidel a Christian. 
'For,' he said," 'I believe a God who could 
lavish such care upon such things must be intel- 
ligent.' " The Lord cares for you since he cares 
for the sparrows. The Lord says : u Look at 



52 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

the lilies exhaling their fragrance." Since God 
cares for them, he cares for you. We may look 
further down, and say : " God cares for even 
these slight shells of auimalculse, and if he cares 
for them he must care for me." 

And now, since there is such a thing as a 
divine providence, I must believe that God rules 
absolutely, and the difficulties which beset my 
life are really God's appointment. What a won- 
derful sacredness this brings into my life ! Even 
the little things in it he appoints. What I must 
bear, I bear because he sends ; and what I do, I 
do because he appoints. Now, the real submis- 
sion is a submission that takes in this fact. 

I am aware there are hearts that know their own 
bitterness. Behind what men call prosperity, 
there are troubles, deep and constant. I know 
many a roof covers some hidden grief. I was 
walking once through that most magnificent 
street in all the world (Euclid Avenue, in Cleve- 
land), and my father said to me: "I have lived 
here nearly all my life ; I know the history of 
these families, and there is not one that does not 
have some hidden trouble." 



SUBMISSION. 53 

The Christian says : " It is because God's 
providence has appointed it"; and true submis- 
sion recognizes his ruling hand. 

Now, just for a moment, let us see what sub- 
mission will do for us : Submission is Peace, 
because it is opposed to discontent. There are 
innumerable roughnesses in mv circumstances 
that are all the work of God's providence. I 
sav: "Lord, I do not flv against these things, as 
the bird does, beating at the bars of its cage. I 
submit." Now T am relieved at once from the 
strain of worrv. I am bereaved of discontent, 
and it is a blessed bereavement. 

There is nothing more common to do, and 
more useless to do. than for a person to look 
over his circumstances, and press his hand on 
this and that thorn until the hand bleeds; and 
then to look over the circumstances of some one 
else, and think : " If I were only treated as this 
one and that one ! " and then grow wretched 
with envy. 

It is the worst thing vou can do. You cannot 
lie on another person's pillow any more than you 
can go out of your own life. Instead of looking 



54 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

at other people and envying them, look up and 
say, " Lord, I submit." Then envy goes at 
once, and peace comes instead. 

Submission is always Power. What is the 
reason God does not help us ? God will give us 
just as much of his grace as we are willing to 
take; the only measure is what you are willing 
to receive. He will do " exceeding abundantly," 
if you will let him. If you refuse to submit, you 
steel your soul against God and his help. 

Amid the mountains, where the shadows fall 
chill and dense, there are places where are some- 
times found, even in June, the remnants of the 
snowdrifts. You refuse to submit, because you 
will not let the light shine in. 

A real submission is always power. How I 
remember it in my own experience! "Well," 
I said to myself, " there are some things I cannot 
do"; but I really meant "I will not do." I kept 
on saying " cannot," and meaning " will not," 
for many a weary day. It did seem to me im- 
possible to bear. I shall never forget when I 
did absolutely submit. When you refuse to 
submit, you close yourself against God's help. 



SUBMISSION. 56 

You get Triumph by submission, because you 
allow God to do what he means to do for you. 
Submission is triumph, because when we let God 
have his way with us, he brings us to the best 
things. 

In the words of Susan Coolidge : 

One stitch dropped, as the weaver drove 

His nimble shuttle to and fro, 
In and out, beneath, above, 

Till the pattern seemed to bud and grow, 
As if the fairies had helping been ; 
One small stitch which could scarce be seen, 
But the one stitch dropped, pulled the next stitch out 
And a weak place grew in the fabric stout ; 
And the perfect pattern was marred for aye, 
By the one small stitch that was dropped that day. 

One small life in God's great plan, 

How futile it seems as the ages roll, 
Do what it may, or strive how it can 

To alter the sweep of the infinite whole ! 
A single stitch in an infinite web, 
A drop in the ocean's flow and ebb ! 
But the pattern is rent where the stitch is lost, 
Or marred where the tangled threads have crossed ; 
And each life that fails of its true intent 
Mars the perfect plan that its Master meant. 

Dear friends, the best thing that we can do 



56 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

concerning the inevitables in our life is to make 
consecration of them to Jesus Christ, and so to 
let his peace dwell in us. 

" To every one on earth 
God gives a burden to be carried down 
The road that lies between the cross and crown ; 

No lot is wholly free : 

He giveth one to thee. 

14 Some carry it aloft, 

Open and visible to any eyes, 

And all may see its form and weight and size ; 
Some hide it in their breast, 
And deem it thus unguessed." 

A little fellow was with his father in the car- 
riage. At his request, his father set him down 
between his knees, and the boy took the reins to 
drive the horses. Looking back, he saw that his 
father's hands were also on the reins, and he 
said, " I thought I was driving, but I wasn't, 
was I ? " God's hands are on the reins, and he 
is turning everything for our best good. God 
knows better than we know. 

One of the sweetest instances of submission 
was in the case of Mrs. Tate, wife of the lat-e 



SUBMISSION. 57 

Archbishop of Canterbury. Five of their little 
ones lay dying almost in a day. Mrs. Tate, in a 
prayer of faith and resignation, said : " Thou 
hast opened unto them the gate of everlasting 
glory ; thou hast sent thy angels to meet them 
and to carry them into Abrani's bosom. There 
they reign with thy elect angels in all glory and 
felicity, forever and ever. Amen." 

So, in all of our lives, there are certain inevit- 
ables. They cannot be otherwise. They are 
the expressions always of the divine authority. 
They are the most emphatic expression of God's 
will. 

A real submission is one which recognizes 
God's authority, which says, "God has done it, 
therefore I accept." Instead of doing as the 
bird does, tearing itself in its efforts to get out of 
the cage, let us submit to what is the expression 
of God's will. 

A true submission trusts in the divine wisdom. 
This is a most wonderful help. For instance, 
Paul wanted to go to Rome; Rome was the 
metropolis of the world, and the gospel banner 
ought to be unfurled there. And God said that 



58 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

he should go. But it was a strange leading. He 
probably expected to go as any traveler might 
go ; but God did not lead him so. There was a 
mob to oppose him in Jerusalem ; then the trouble 
in Csesarea; lying there in confinement, he did 
what a Roman citizen must do if he wanted jus- 
tice. He appealed unto Csesar, and therefore 
had to go to Rome as a prisoner. But now we 
can see it, I am sure, though Paul could not see 
it when he was under the process of it — we can 
see that that was the very best way to preach, 
being secured safety and leisure (because a pris- 
oner who had appealed to Caesar might not be 
touched by any mob), as he could not have been 
secured had he gone there not as a prisoner. 
And he had a chance to preach the gospel, be- 
cause he won the good will of the centurion and 
was put by him in the care of a soldier, and was 
not kept in close confinement. We owe a great 
part of the most precious portions of our New 
Testament to Paul's imprisonment at Rome. He 
himself says : " The things which happened unto 
me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance 
of the gospel." God sees with larger and other 



SUBMISSION. 59 

eyes than ours. We cannot see a moment through ; 
God sees the a^es through. A real submission 
is a trust in the divine providence and in the 
divine wisdom, a trust that God has really 
arranged things for us as is best for us. 

41 Take thou thy burden, then, 
Into thy hands, and lay it at his feet, 
And whether it be success or defeat, 
Or pain, or sin, or care, 
Leave it calmly there. 

" It is the lonely load 
That crushes out the life and light of heaven ; 
But, borne with him, the soul restored, forgiven, 
Sings out through all the days 
Her joy, and God's high praise.' ' 

Yes, the way to bear burdens is to submit to 
burdens. The way to get rid of burdens is to 
bear burdens. 

Now, forget all else that I have said, but re- 
member the last two sentences : " The way to 
bear burdens is to submit to burdens. The way 
to get rid of burdens is to bear burdens." 



V. 

DREADING. 

JUST for a very little while on this stormy 
afternoon, let us talk together of the com- 
monest trouble of the Christian life, that which 
our Lord is so constantly warning us against. It 
is a kind of foreboding, a sort of dread of what 
is to come, a borrowing of trouble, a crossing the 
bridge before we come to it, and seeing the future 
filled with haunting shapes of fear, a gloomy 
wondering how we shall get through — in one 
word, a kind of dread. Now, that a Christian 
should be under such a shadow is neither Scrip- 
tural nor necessary. A Christian man should 
have his heart in the sunlight, even if his out- 
ward circumstances should not be shining. Our 
Lord's outward surroundings grew dimmer con- 
tinually, until they passed into the utter dark- 
ness. As his ministry advanced, the popularity 
of its beginning was soon eclipsed amid the hatreds 
60 



DREADING. 61 

and discussions and turmoils and murderous in- 
tents of the people at Jerusalem. We must not 
forget that while our Lord was always hungry 
for human companionship, yet he had always an 
inner resource. He tells how he is left alone, 
and yet that he is not alone, for the Father is 
with him. And he is constantly assuring us that 
this inner resource is as much for the Christian 
himself as for his Lord. He says : " He that 
believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers 
of living water." There should be a sort of in- 
dependence of outward circumstances, and a 
clearing of the clouds within, though they be 
piled around us. It always takes the heart out 
of one to have dread, and prevents the accom- 
plishment of anything grand. In Deuteronomy, 
Moses rehearses to the children of Israel all the 
dealings of the Lord with them, and shows them 
the injury they had suffered from this dread. 
He reminds them that they had fainted at the 
report of the spies, and the picture which they 
drew of the Anakim, and how a want of heart 
fell upon the whole encampment. But although 
Moses warned them not to continue in this state 



62 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

of unbelief and fear, they continually relapsed, 
and finally fell back into the wilderness, and 
never reached the Promised Land. 

Well, we are like those Israelites. We seethe 
Anakim, or, at least, we think we see them, and 
they are very big sometimes, and fearfully strong, 
and the dread falls upon our hearts, chilling and 
foreboding. I believe I have touched upon a 
very common tendency. How shall we over- 
come it, this standing in the presence of a duty 
and thinking we cannot take hold of it and 
master it? One way is by a real, earnest resolu- 
tion that we will stop dreading. Very often we 
have to come up to that point where we shall 
simply resolve that we will not fear again. 

We are apt to excuse ourselves from a duty 
because we do not feel like it. Now, there is 
nothing that so brings dread to our hearts as the 
consciousness of undone duty. If I put off my 
sermon until the last of the week, I soon fall into 
the dumps; and the gloom, instead of lessening, 
increases in like proportion with my neglect. I 
know a good many Christians to w T hom I think 
resolutions here would be of immense good. 



DREADING. 63 

In the next place, I think we can overcome 
this tendency, if we will remember that in nine 
cases out of ten, when we really go forth to the 
doing of a thing, we find it much less laborious 
than we thought it would be. 

When I was a boy, and went to Brooklyn to 
preach there, I thought the greatest man then 
living was Henry Ward Beecher. I never shall 
forget how much I w r anted to meet him, and 
how yet. because he seemed to me so gigantic in 
every way, I feared to meet him. I w r ell remem- 
ber the day that I heard he wanted to see me, 
and how I went down to his house that spring 
morning and walked back and forth before that 
door manv times, not daring: to ring the bell. I 
must have waited half an hour before I found 
courage to go up the steps and ring, and I re- 
member how my heart palpitated as I waited 
there, and how it palpitated more when the door 
opened, and I asked in a very feeble sort of 
voice if Mr. Beecher was in ; and how relieved 
I felt when told he was not in. And yet all that 
fear and dread was quite needless. I knew, 
when I afterward did meet him ; that I had 



64 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

nothing to dread. And this is very often so. 
Here is some duty you think you ought to do 
to-dav, and vou take hold of it in a feeble, halt- 
ing sort of way ; but when you have fully 
grasped it, you find it is nothing at all. And so, 
I think, it will be about dying. Of course, we 
dread it ; but I think, when we get there, it will 
be nothing dreadful. Pain is to warn us of 
some physical obstruction; it will cease when 
there is no occasion for pain. The nerves give 
the warning. If you press a knife deep into the 
muscles there will be no pain, for no nerves are 
there : they lie near the surface. There is no 
pain in gangrene, because there is no more use 
for pain. And I believe the apparent difficulties 
that sometimes appear in dying when we stand 
beside our friends are only apparent. When we 
have passed beyond a certain point, it will not 
be difficult to die. And then there will be such 
an adjustment of the spirit to the fact that what 
seemed to us so dreadful will not be so at all. 
I do not know how near I came to death, but 
once I was very sick, and when I felt that I might 
go I did not dread death ; and when I found 



DREADING. 65 

the turn was toward life I was sorry. I do not 
believe we need to dread death ; it will be when 
we come to it like the Anakim, who fled when 
the Lord pursued them in his strength. And 
so, in nine cases out of ten, the thing we most 
dread will not be nearly so bad as we think. 

We can get out of this foreboding by thinking 
more of God and less of things. It was Peter's 
trouble in the storm that distracted his vision 
from the Lord to the winds and the waves, and 
then down he went like lead. How emphatically 
the Scriptures teach that our vision should be 
fixed on God — on his love, for instance. I can 
always assure myself of it when I think of the 
Cross. There was his beloved Son's utmost 
sacrifice. There he broke his heart for me, and 
" he who spared not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for us all, how shall he not with him 
freely give us all things." Think of God and his 
knowledge. It is very beautiful to run through 
in the Scriptures those passages where God speaks 
of knowing. Take a concordance and run down 
those lines about his knowledge, and at how 
many angles you will get a view of it. 

E 



66 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

And then, if we should think of God coming 
to us when we most need his help, as he did to the 
disciples in the stormy lake, we should gain 
courage. They were steadily doing what their 
Lord told them to do, and making their way 
toward the Bethesda, where he had bid them go. 
The wind was right in their faces, and they were 
making no headway, yet they never attempted to 
turn back, but were " toiling in rowing." It was 
in the early evening they entered the boat, and 
soon the wind came, and through the next hour, 
and through the next and the next, they toiled 
alone. We should have said it was of no use, but 
they did not say so ; and at an hour correspond- 
ing to about three or four o'clock in the morning, 
when their energies must have been almost con- 
sumed, at that critical time, they saw the form 
of one approaching. At first, they are fright- 
ened, but soon they hear above the tumult of the 
waves the music of the words, " It is I ; be not 
afraid." And so the Lord just comes at the 
time when he is most needed, and that is the 
kind of a Lord we have. 

Really, it is possible to have braver hearts 



DREADING. 67 

than we have, and then we shall help other 
people. If we will only stop dreading, and will 
steadily look toward God, we shall do better 
service for him. 

Not a brooklet floweth 

Onward to the sea, 
Not a sunbeam gloweth 

On its bosom free, 
Not a seed unfoldeth 

To the glorious air, 
But our Father holdeth 

It within his care. 

Not a floweret fadeth, 

Not a star grows dim, 
Not a cloud o'ershadoweth 

But 'tis marked by him. 
Dream not that thy gladness 

God doth fail to see ; 
Think not in thy sadness 

He forgetteth thee. 

Not a tie is broken, 

Not a hope laid low, 
Not a farewell spoken 

But our God doth know. 
Every hair is numbered, 

Every tear is weighed 
In the changeless balance 

Wisest love has made. 



68 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Power eternal resteth 

In his changeless hand ; 
Love immortal hasteth 

Swift at his command. 
Faith can firmly trust him 

In the darkest hour, 
For the key she holdeth 

To his love and power. 



VI. 

GOD'S REMEDY FOR CARE. 

PROFESSOR WARE, of Cambridge, was 
once asked concerning the best way of 
bringing up children. He answered by this 
story : 

In the old times there were two towns in 
New England separated by a dense forest. The 
way through the forest was only opened by 
a trail. Once the ministers of the towns pro- 
posed an exchange of pulpits. One of the 
ministers started on his journey. Doubtful 
about the path, he asked an old woman whom 
he met the best way of getting to his destination. 
" Well," she said, " you follow this trail on and 
on and on until you come to the place where the 
trail forks ; then you take the one which looks 
most like it, and then go ahead." " That," said 
Professor Ware, " is about all the advice I can 
give as to bringing up children ; when you are 



70 SATURDAY AFTERNOON 

in doubt as to the way, take the trail that looks 
most like it and go ahead. " 

That doubtful trail represents our life. We 
are surrounded with mystery ; we cannot see a 
foot ahead ; we are compelled to stand where the 
ways meet ; and we must take the way that looks 
the better, and go ahead. The doom of life is 
choice ; life is but a vast procession of choices, 
and each of these leads to some result. We are 
kings as to choice ; but slaves as to the result of 
the choice. Taking the wrong track, we are shut 
up as to the result. Surrounded with mystery, 
under the sense of our finiteness, we must choose 
the best we can. 

And just here, where the ways fork, and where 
we cannot know precisely which is the better to 
follow, and yet, where we must choose this or 
that — -just here is the breeding place of care. 

Here, at this place where the ways fork, cares 
breed, for example, about your children. A 
difficult thing it is to bring up a child ! How 
constantly you are burdened with care ! You do 
the best you can ; but how anxious you are lest 
your judgment has failed ! How you watch 



god's remedy for care. 71 

beside the child as he sleeps, and wonder if the 
leading you are giving him is going to issue in 
the best bloom ! 

How cares breed at this place for our friends, 
especially religiously ! How anxious you are for 
your husband, for your wife, for your friend ! 
Have I spoken enough ; have I spoken too 
much? Have I been earnest enough; or have 
I been too earnest? Have I prayed enough? 
How many a religious wife I have known bur- 
dened with care for her husband, with shapes of 
fear set all about her. 

How care breeds about ourselves ! We ask : 
" Have we decided this or that in the wisest way ? 
If we could only get back to where the decision 
was forced on us ! " But we cannot. I have 
stood by the great blast furnace, and have seen 
the molten iron break forth as fluid as water, so 
that it could be turned and shaped in any way ; 
but in a moment it was fixed. So with our 
chokes : they were for a moment in our power ; 
now they are unchangeable. We cannot go 
back. 

Here care breeds as to our future. Will this 



72 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

choice which I have made issue in what is best 
for me and for those whom I love ? 

Thus we see all about us the shapes of various 
cares. 

When we have these cares upon us, let us 
remember what Peter says (1 Peter 5:7): " Cast- 
ing all your care upon him, for he careth for 
you." The word rendered "care" in the first 
clause means something which divides you, cuts 
you in twain, distracts you, which cuts your 
peace and joy in pieces. When I am confronted 
Math cares in the place where the ways meet I 
become distracted. My life, instead of being 
strong and triumphant, becomes weak and broken. 
Sir Isaac Newton, when asked how he had ac- 
complished so much, said that he had no genius ; 
but that he had held his mind to things in atten- 
tion. So our own Professor Henry, of the 
Smithsonian Institute, ascribed his success, not 
to any genius, but to his habit of turning all his 
guns upon one point in the walls of obstacles 
before him. But when we are distracted by 
cares we cannot hold our minds in attention, we 
cannot turn our guns. We go on this way and 



god's remedy fob cake. 73 

that, until our life, our peace, our joy, are like a 
fabric that is beaten out and raveled by the 
winds. If vou had a beautiful shawl, and vou 
should hang it where the wind beating it would 
ravel it all out, it would represent the effect of 
these cares. It was to this that our Lord re- 
ferred when he said : " Take no thought for the 
morrow" — that is, be not raveled to poor and 
helpless fringe by anxieties about the morrow. 

Is there a remedy for this ? Can we be rid 
of these cares ? Can we be free and glad, not- 
withstanding our finiteness ? 

The remedy is twofold. 

1. The thought of God's care. " He careth for 
you." The word which refers to care as toward 
God is very different from the word meaning 
care as toward us. The passage might be ren- 
dered, " Casting all your distraction on God, 
because he is concerned for you." He is not 
distracted and hesitant ; lie regards vou all the 
time. And the certainty of this care of God is 
the remedy for your own care. 

Since God cares for us, he must notice us. We 
are often told that the Lord " knows us." This 



74 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

means sympathetic knowledge, sympathetic in- 
terest. What a help it is, and what a comfort 
that God knows ! 

A little girl, who had perhaps never been 
across the street alone, was sent on a necessary 
errand across the way. She stood on the curb- 
stone, hesitating ; then she looked back and saw 
that her mother was looking at her ; at once she 
said; " Yes, mamma, Fll do it, if you'll keep 
looking at me all the way. 1 ' So God is regard- 
ing you and me ; it is that sort of care that he 
has for us. 

It is the care of guidance. Hold the doctrine 
of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, only with 
this limitation — the Holy Spirit in his work for 
us uses only the written word. If you are ever 
inspired to do aught contrary to the New Testa- 
ment, that is not from the Holy Spirit. If you 
are inspired to do what is according to the New 
Testament, that is from the Holy Spirit. If you 
have chosen according to the Holy Spirit and the 
New Testament, even if the way is dark, do not 
go back. We do not enough trust the Holy Spirit, 
He is with us, and if we look sincerely to him, 



god's remedy for care. 75 

he will guide us. When Paul was led to 
Philippi, even though his choice brought im- 
prisonment and scourging, he did not go back 
on his choice. The books of Chronicles are to 
me the most arid of all the books of the Bible. 
But there is one verse which I love to read. It is 
2 Chron. 16:9: " The eyes of the Lord run to 
and fro throughout the whole earth, to show 
himself strong in behalf of them whose heart is 
perfect toward him." This does not mean that 
most wretched doctrine of perfectionism; it 
means those whose heart is turned toward God 
in pure intent. 

This care for you involves the overruling of 
your mistakes, A mistake is an error of judg- 
ment ; a sin is a conscious violation of God's law. 
Since God thus regards us, he overrules our mis- 
takes. My boy makes lots of mistakes. I over- 
rule them; so do you for your child. You say: 
" I will do the best I can for vou." " The mis- 
takes of my life have beeu many." If that were 
all, I might be discouraged ; but God cares for 
me. 

Livingstone began his work among the Bechu- 



76 SATUBDAY AFTERNOON. 

anas, among whom his father-in-law Moffat had 
labored. But then he set out to be an explorer, 
Moffat said that it was a mistake. The Board at 
home said that it was a mistake. Perhaps he 
himself may have said at times that it was a 
mistake. But how magnificently has God over- 
ruled it! He pushed into the centre of the Con- 
tinent, disclosing its secrets. Stanley went in 
quest of him, and found him, and opened the 
way to the Congo region. If you are God's 
child, he will overrule your mistakes. 

Since God thus regards us, he will overrule 
our sins. There is in this no license to sin. If 
we take from this fact a license to sin, we are not 
God's children. But if we are led into sin 
unawares, by overmastering temptation, God 
overrules it. I had lately a letter from a 
friend who was long in a state of nominal 
religion. He was led into sin. Now he writes 
me that he sees, as never before, the power 
and preciousness of Christ's atonement j and 
he trusts him as never before. God's care for 
that young man was overruling his sin so as 
to force him to a higher life. We must not indeed 



god's remedy for cake. 77 

continue in sin that grace may abound; but if 
we are overswept into sin, then God overrules 
our sins and mistakes. 

2. Another remedy is the personal appropria- 
tion of God's care. Ci Casting all your care upon 
him." We are to throw our cares over and to 
let go of them. You say : " I cannot. I want 
to; I try, but how can I?" You can do it if 
you will let your little child teach you. Some- 
times my boy comes home, and there has been a 
snarl, perhaps in the school, perhaps he is snarled 
up in himself. He tells me about it ; I say : 
" Very well, I will attend to it." He does not 
think of it any more ; he thinks of me, not of 
the thing that troubled him. Think more of 
God, and less of the thing that troubles you. 

Oh, if you would read the Bible more ; if you 
would search it for some of the promises ; if you 
would say: " I am going to free myself of some 
of these cares that cut my joy in pieces, by cast- 
ing them on God." Think of that verse: "All 
things work together for good to them that love 
God." Suppose cares come on you. Take the 
sword of the Spirit; stab the cares with that 



78 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

text: "All things work together." Do you think 
that the cares can live ? You will have life and 
joy and peace. 

Paul had an awful care, a thorn in the flesh. 
It cut him to pieces ; it interfered with his duties. 
He prayed over it once, and again and again and 
again. Then came the word : "My grace is suf- 
ficient for thee." The thorn was there, but he 
kept thinking of Christ and his grace. 

Then there was William the Prince of Orange, 
through whose labors and sufferings our liberties 
were born. When overwhelmed with cares, he 
threw all on God, saying : " God will order all 
that is needed for my salvation." 

This care of God does not contemplate our 
being without discipline. Rather it includes our 
discipline. I once spent a red-letter afternoon 
in the studio of Powers, at Florence. I saw the 
blocks of Carrara marble; I saw the same blocks 
half sculptured. As the sculptor's chisel cut 
great scars in the marble, it seemed as if it 
were conscious, and as if I could hear it speak, 
and say : " O sculptor ! keep on till you set free 
the being, the angel perhaps, that is confined 



god's remedy for care. 79 

in me. Give me this, though I die of the 
pain." 

So you have pain, trouble. Well, it is God's 
process of discipline through which he is bring- 
ing you to your shining. 

The cure of our care lies in God's powerful 
care for us, and in our appropriation of that care. 
God says to us perpetually : " Child of my love, 
lean hard ; if you love me, lean hard." 



VII. 
THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 

IT is of the best cure for heart-sinking I would 
like to think with you for a little now. 

Every one of us, now and then at least, what- 
ever may be the natural temperament, has had 
this experience of heart-sinking. We all know 
what it means — a kind of failing of strength ; 
a kind of vague, dark feeling of apprehension ; a 
wondering how we are going to get on. Even a 
person of the most hopeful nature will sometimes 
pass into the gloom. 

There are many causes for heart-sinking. 
Sometimes our circumstances produce it. I sup- 
pose nobody was ever placed in circumstances 
in which he could not suggest some improvement. 
Ahab had. a shining palace in Samaria, with an 
exquisite prospect on this side and on that, and 
the palace was very rich in its furnishing. Every 
one of us would have said that he had all his 
80 



THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 81 

heart could wish. But his palace grounds were 
not just the shape he wanted; they were angu- 
lar, the lines including them were not of per- 
fect straightness. And this was because Naboth 
the Jezreelite had a vineyard close by the palace 
of Ahab; and whenever the king looked out 
of his palace window he saw that little spot 
of ground, and coveted it day by day, until at 
last he fell into very deep and tremendous sin. 
I suppose we are all like Ahab. We may not 
live in palaces, but though probably we all live 
in comfortable houses, there are yet angularities 
in our circumstances which make our hearts 
sink. 

Fears for the future cause heart-sinking. 
Edwin, King of Northumbria, away back in the 
seventh century, called a council to inquire about 
Christianity. One of this council addressed him 
thus : u The present life of man on earth, O king, 
seems to me, in comparison with that time which 
is unknown to us, like the swift flight of a swal- 
low through the room where you sit at supper in 
the winter. The swallow flies in at one door, 
and immediately out at another ; and while he is 

F 



82 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

within be is safe from the wintry storm ; but he 
passes out into the darkness from which he had 
emerged. So this life of man appears for a short 
space; but of what went before, or what is to 
follow we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, 
this new doctrine contains something more cer- 
tain, it seems wise to consider it." I do not 
know of any better figure of a human life than 
the swallow flying into the room and then out of 
it into the storm and darkness. We come, 
whence, we cannot tell, and are a little while, 
and then are gone. And when we think of the 
vast, uncertain future, often our hearts sink. 

There is heart-sinking from the pain within 
ourselves. I think of Paul's thorn in the flesh. 
The Bible is a mirror ; we may see ourselves in 
it. Chronic invalids, it seems to me, must find 
comfort in the thought that the great, overcoming 
Paul was always in their plight. That thorn 
troubled him most sadly. He tells us it made 
his heart sink; it stabbed him. Sometimes 
people are companions of Paul in such circum- 
stances. 

Then the mystery of the divine providence is 



THE CURE FOB HEART-SINKING. 83 

a cause for heart-sinking. Sometimes I go into 
places where there is bereavement, and I heai 
the perplexed inquiry: "Why has God tried 
me so ? Why should it not have been spared to 
me — this treasure upon which my heart is set? 
Why should this child die, when so many other 
children live, who do not have the propitious 
place that my child had? " And down goes the 
heart like lead. 

Now the usual method of cure for heart-sink- 
ing is no cure at all. I find the Psalms very 
wonderful as mirrors of human experience. 
David tried a method which is not a cure. 
David complained in the thirteenth Psalm, 
verses 1,2: u How long wilt thou forget me, O 
Lord ? forever ? How long shall I take counsel 
in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? 
How long shall mine enemy be exalted over 
me ? " He was trying the wrong method ; was 
taking counsel in his soul, thinking how he could 
arrange matters ; and so long as he did that he 
had to cry, How long ? Our usual method is to 
look within ourselves and wonder why we are so 
tried, forgetting that we are ignorant and weak. 



84 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

It is always useless to be pulling ourselves to 
pieces. If I wanted to kill a lily, the surest way 
would be to dig it up and examine its mechan- 
ism; but I should never by that means see 
the bloom that is possible for the lily. And 
when we pull ourselves to pieces we do not help 
ourselves. 

But there is a better cure and a real one : It 
is the refusing to look within ourselves, and 
downward toward ourselves, and the determining 
to look at the Lord we love ; at the Lord in whose 
grasp we are. If you read on in this thirteenth 
Psalm you will find that David finally looks 
this way. He begins to cry Godward : " Con- 
sider and hear me, O Lord my God; lighten 
mine eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death." And 
when he begins to look to God, this psalm, that 
was so full of plaint, is turned to praise: "I 
will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt 
bountifully with me." And so the true cure for 
heart-sinking is a look outside of yourselves, 
onward and upward toward God. Take some 
description of your Lord, and fasten your vision 
on that, and let the power and greatness of it 



THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 85 

sink into your hearts. Then your heart will 
begin to rise just as David's did. 

There is one description of our Lord that 
helps me. It is that in Isaiah 9:6: " For unto 
us a child is born . . . and the government shall 
be upon his shoulder." When I am down- 
hearted I am very apt to think of this Scripture, 
and I find that the more I think of it the 
brighter and happier I get. In those old times 
they did not have such convenient locks and keys 
as we have now ; the keys were very cumbrous 
and heavy, and must be carried on the shoulders 
of the men to whom the care of the city was 
committed. And this is the figure, I think, 
from which this designation of our Lord was 
derived. The government is on his shoulders ; 
it is all in his hands. And when I think of that 
I get out of being down-hearted. He carries the 
keys ; the government is on his shoulders. Here 
is a cure for heart-sinking. 

Well, this Scripture goes on with a very won- 
derful description of Jesus Christ ; it tells us he 
is wonderful, and therefore able to carry the 
government on his shoulder. He is wonderful 



86 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

as far as he himself is concerned. People find 
fault with miracles. The greatest miracle to me 
is the presence in this world of such a heart as 
Jesus Christ. Nothing in the world is so con- 
trolling as a man's early training ; and our Lord 
came into a training most sectarian. He was a 
Hebrew, subject to Hebrew culture ; he lived at 
the time when the Hebrew thought had culmi- 
nated in the greatest bigotry. The Jew would 
not go through Samaria because those who lived 
there were not orthodox Jews. It would be 
entirely impossible for us to conceive the in- 
tense, bitter narrowness of these Hebrews, under 
whose care and tuition Christ's early years were 
spent. The wonder is that to him all hearts may 
hasten and find rest. The Lord Jesus Christ 
makes himself just as much at home with the 
Esquimaux of the North as he does with you and 
me, dwelling in the temperate zone; and he is 
just as exactly in kin with the mystical dreamer 
of Oriental lands. He is so broad and great 
that all hearts can turn to him, and all find in 
him that which can supply their needs. I do 
not know any wonder so great as Jesus standing 



THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 87 

there amid the narrowness of his surroundings, 
and teaching, amidst them, the brotherhood of 
mac. And, having entered so thoroughly into 
our experience, tempted like as we are, how 
utterly one with us did he become ! Though he 
might have summoned legions of angels, though 
he might have refused to drink the bitter cup, 
he accepted all, that he might by experience 
understand our pain and woe. The stones, dis- 
integrated by the forces of nature, are broken 
into soil, and in the soil the seed is placed. 
So, out of the broken stone comes the wheat 
which is made into bread. So, truly, does 
the Lord " command that the stones be made 
bread." Yet he did not do this for his own 
advantage, but fasted forty days and forty 
nights that he might know of pain and hunger, 
and sympathize with us in our distress. The 
death into which he went for our sakes is such as 
you and I must some time meet. So he comes 
into closest relationship and sympathy with us — 
the great, broad-hearted Christ, the sympathizing 
Christ, touched with the feeling of our infirmi- 
ties ! Thus he can carry on the government in 



88 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

a loving, wise way. When you look through 
the long reach of providence, how loving God 
seems ! The other day I was present at the 
annual New England dinner, and I thought how 
strange must have seemed God's ways to those 
Pilgrim Fathers, but how wise to us! Had 
those people landed where they meant to land, 
they would not have had such rigor to contend 
with, but they would not have developed such 
sturdy characters. We can see the wisdom that 
gathered those few men about Plymouth Rock to 
build this mighty nation. As God is full of 
wisdom toward nations, so he is full of wisdom 
toward individuals. 

We are told also that this One on whose 
shoulder the government rests is mighty ; and so 
again he is surely able to carry the government. 
I got a fresh glimpse of the divine might some 
time ago. I was looking through a telescope of 
great power. I saw, in the field of this instru- 
ment, Jupiter, with those strange markings on 
his sphere, and those strange moons masquerad- 
ing round him. It gave a vivid conception of 
the vast and exact control of God, to behold those 



THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 89 

globes, hanging on nothing in the wide spaces, 
yet poised in balance exquisite, and careering 
through their appointed orbits. He on whose 
shoulder the government lies sustains not only 
Jupiter and his moons, but Saturn, with his 
rings and moons, and Venus, and all the million 
brightnesses of the milky way, and holds as well 
the boundless universe in his firm grasp, and 
guides it ever onward to the finishing. He is 
the Mighty One. Surely he can carry me upon 
his shoulder. Do you remember the hymn we 
sometimes sing — 

"The voice that rolls the stars along 
Speaks all the promises ' ' ? 

Besides — to go on with this description of him 
on whose shoulder the government is laid — he is 
the everlasting Father, or, as it is more truly 
rendered, the " Father of eternity . ;; He is the 
Being whence eternity springs, the one who 
exists. Nothing can in the least damage or hin- 
der that steady Being. Though he took upon 
himself our humanity, and bore our woes, and 
submitted to the death which we must die, he 



90 SATURDAY AFTEKNOON. 

" burst the bonds of death and opened the king- 
dom of heaven to all believers." Surely the Being 
steadily existing can take care of the phases and 
changes of my little life. 

And then, not only is he Wonderful and 
Counsellor and Mighty and Enduring, but his 
government contemplates the highest ends ; he is 
the Prince of Peace. This is what he rules 
for, that you and I need not be restless or dis- 
traught. He says : " Let not your heart be 
troubled." 

Not only is he all these, but he is the Trium- 
phant One. Of his government there shall be 
no end. We are on the winning side of things 
necessarily when we are on the side of Jesus 
Christ. He grasps the scepter of enduring vic- 
tory. He cannot know defeat. How blessed 
the truth, that the government is on such a 
shoulder ! 

Well, when my heart sinks, instead of follow- 
ing David's first example, and beginning to take 
counsel in my soul, I had immensely better 
follow David's last example and look out of my- 
self and upward to him on whose shoulder is the 



THE CURE FOR HEART-SINKING. 91 

government. The thought of him will cure 
heart-sinking. 

For a moment, now, notice where thought of 
him will cure heart-sinking. It may cure 
heart-sinking concerning my natural disposi- 
tion. u Without holiness no man shall see 
the Lord." Somehow the new must conquer, 
and a clashing must be between the new and 
the old, and the "old Adam" seems often to 
be on top. How easy it is to be uncourteous and 
harsh and mean ! People find a great deal of fault 
with the doctrine of total depravity; and, when 
stated in a certain form, as it used to be stated, 
that everybody is as bad as can be, I do not accept 
it. When, however, it is stated in this way — 
when it is said that in every part of our nature 
sin has damaged us terribly, that is certainly 
true. We are none of us what we want to be. 
We all know how strong the struggle often is 
between the old Adam and the new. 

But if, instead of thinking of my damaged 
nature ; if, instead of fastening vision on that, — 
and that will surely give me heart-sinking, — I 
remember that the government is on his shoulder. 



92 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

I shall find the cure for heart-sinking. I have 
lately seen one who is very sick with a disease 
from which she will surely die, if not soon cured. 
She knows it, but is generally cheerful. But one 
thing somewhat disturbs her. She is not abso- 
lutely sure that she can utterly trust her physi- 
cian ; that his method of treatment is certainly 
the best. Were she precisely and triumphantly 
sure of that, how speedily would the clouds be 
swept from her sky ! 

But we may be absolutely sure of him upon 
whose shoulder the government is laid. He will 
bring us forth conquerors at last, because he is 
the Mighty One, the Father of Eternity, the 
Prince of Peace. 

And so, you see, instead of having heart-sink- 
ing about myself, I may be triumphant about 
myself; for I look out of myself to him upon 
whose shoulder the government is laid. The 
surer way to get rid of your bad disposition, the 
surer way to become courteous, is to come in 
contact with courteous people. "Beholding as 
in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed 
into the same image from glory to glory/ 



>> 



THE CUKE FOR HEART-SINKING. 93 

But there is so much space between the beginning 
Christ-likeness and the consummated Christ- 
likeness that I must be disciplined. Sometimes 
my heart sinks under it, and then I cry : "Why? 
Why ? " And I get for answer the only thing 
one can ever get — the echo, Why ? Why ? And 
yet I am persuaded that above and beyond it all 
there is most wise reason. 

I saw some beautiful lines lately that I should 
like to have you hear: 

Some time when all life's lessons have been learned, 

And sun and stars fore verm ore have set, 
The things which our weak judgment here has spurned, 

The things o' er which we grieve with lashes wet, 
Will flash before us clear in life's dark night, 

As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue ; 
And we shall see how all God's plans are right, 

And what most seemed reproof was love most true. 

And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh, 

God's plans go on as best for you and me, 
And how he heeded not our feeble cry 

Because unto the end his eye could see ; 
And e'en as prudent parents disallow 

Too much of sweet to craving babyhood, 
So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now 

Life's sweetest things because it seemeth good. 



94 SATURDAY AFTEKNOON. 

And if, some time, commingled with life's wine, 

We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink, 
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine 

Pours out the portion for our lips to drink ; 
And if some friend we love is lying low, 

Where human kisses cannot reach his face, 
Oh, do not blame the loving Father & , 

But wear your sorrow with obedient grace. 

And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath 

Is not the fairest gift God gives his friend ; 
Sometimes the sable pall of death 

Conceals the sweetest boon his love can send. 
If we could push ajar the gates of life 

And stand within, and all God's workings see, 
We could interpret all this doubt and strife, 

And for each mystery could find a key. 

But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart ; 

God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold. 
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart ; 

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold ; 
And when, through patient toil we reach the land 

Where tired feet with sandals loosed may rest, 
Where we may clearly know and understand, 

I think that we will say : ' l God knoweth best. ' ' 

Then also, since he is such a one on whose 
shoulder the government is laid, I may find, by 
thinking of him, cure for heart-sinking about 



THE CUKE FOR HEART-SINKIXG. 95 

dying. When the fear of dying assaults, the 
best and quickest thing to do is to turn our 
thoughts toward Jesus Christ, on whose shoulder 
is the government. 

Do you remember John Bunvan's exquisite 
description of Mr. Fearing ? Brave Great-heart 
is telling about him: "Why, he was always 
afraid that he should come short of whither he 
had a desire to go. Everything frightened him 
that he heard anybody speak of, if it had the 
least appearance of opposition in it. I heard 
that he lay roaring at the Slough of Despond for 
above a month together ; nor durst he, for all he 
saw several go over before him, venture, though 
they, many of them, offered to lend him their 
hands. Well, after he had lain at the Slough of 
Despond a great while, as I have told you, one 
sunshiny morning, I don't know how, he ven- 
tured, and so got over ; but when he was over 
he would scarce believe it. He had, I think, a 
Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that 
he carried everv where with him, or else he could 
never have been as he was. But when he was 
come at the river where was no bridge, there 



96 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

again he was in a heavy case. Now, now, he 
said, he should be drowned forever, and so never 
see that face with comfort that he had come so 
many miles to behold. And here also I took 
notice of what was very remarkable : The water 
of that river was lower at this time than ever I 
saw it in my life ; so he went over at last not 
much above wet shod." 

You see he need not have been so fearful. He 
should have remembered him upon whom the 
government is laid. Let us look away from 
ourselves unto him. George Macdonald sings : 

41 1 think that Death has two sides to it — 
One sunny and one dark ; as this round earth 
Is every day half sunny and half dark. 
We on the dark side call the mystery Death ; 
They, on the other, looking down in light, 
Wait the glad birth with other tears than ours.' ' 



VIII. 
THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 

I would like to talk to you for a little while this 
afternoon about a verse which you will find 
in 2 Cor. 9:15: " Thanks be unto God for his 
unspeakable gift." I wish to talk about what God 
gives us. Unspeakable means inestimable ; it 
means what we cannot compass even in thought ; 
it means beyond all estimation. There is no 
gift like the gift of God to us. And the reason 
we are such poverty-stricken Christians is because 
we do not realize this gift enough. George Mac- 
donald tells of a castle in which lived an old 
man and his nephew; they were very poor, 
though they were the owners of the castle. Yet 
from time immemorial there had been concealed 
within its walls jewels, placed there by some re- 
mote ancestors, so that in case anything should 
happen to their descendants they might have 
something upon which to fall back. Finally, 

G 97 



98 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

the knowledge of these treasures came to them, 
and they found themselves in the enjoyment of 
vast riches. They had these riches just as really 
before as now; the only difference was that 
now they saw them, took them, and used them. 

Just so with Christians. We are the heirs of 
the universe, and yet we often act as if we were 
paupers. Yet none of us are paupers. Chris- 
tians are the aristocrats of the universe, if we 
only knew it. 

Surely, the gift beyond all price is our Lord 
Jesus Christ himself. The pivotal text of Scrip- 
ture is what Luther called " a little gospel " ; " God 
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." God 
did not simply give us his power, his love, his 
care, things which were on the fringe of his be- 
ing, so to speak ; but that which was the central 
thing in his being. Now, it is possible for us 
really to possess Jesus Christ — and this is to be 
a Christian. The trouble is, we are so anxious 
to get gifts from Christ that we do not enough 
value himself. 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 99 

A friend told me an interesting story about 
how he had been gone a long time from home ; 
and, on his return, his little daughter ran down 
the stairs to him as quickly as she could, aud 
said : " "Well, papa, what have you got for me ? " 
She did not seem to care for him, but only for his 
gifts, and she was so occupied with them as to for- 
get all about her father. He was really sad about 
it. The next time he went away he did not 
bring her any gift. The little girl, as usual, ran 
to him, and said : " Oh, papa, what have you 
brought me?" "Lucy, I have brought you 
myself this time." The little girl understood at 
once. Tears filled her eyes, and she said : " Well, 
papa, I am so glad you have come back home ; 
I am so glad to see you ! " 

So it is with our Lord Jesus Christ. This 
gift of himself includes everything. God gave 
his Son for you and me. The wonderful thing 
about Christianity is that it lifts us into intimacy 
with the being on the throne. We need no 
further mediatorial sacrifice to come to him, nor 
long and difficult service. But he is, if we will 
have it so, our Friend, our Guest ; and it is 



100 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

possible for us to enter into an intimate, exqui- 
site companionship with him. 

Prayer is a request for specific things, or a 
thanking God for his care and keeping. But 
there is a higher realm of prayer than these ; it 
is the realm of communion, where we are so 
given to Christ, and he to us, that we think of 
him all the time, and talk with him all the time ; 
and when, while in company, we are yet alone 
with him. It is the ultimate fruit of the Chris- 
tian life that we so have Christ himself that we 
are in communion with him. 

And in a sense so real that there are no figures 
which the Holy Spirit can find to fully set forth 
its reality, Jesus Christ comes and dwells with 
us and makes our poverty wealth. 

God's utmost gift to us is Jesus Christ himself. 
Do not be satisfied with anything less. Some 
people have a church, and they think ever so 
much of the church ; and some people are 
always talking of the sacraments — the Lord's 
Supper and baptism. Some have a minister, and 
they lavish everything on the minister. Some 
have a book and some have a ritual. But do 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT, 101 

not you be satisfied with anything else than Jesus 
Christ. He is better than church and holier 
than the holiest thing. Let your Christian life 
be one of reception of Jesus Christ. When I 
hear so much about the church, I fear these peo- 
ple do not know very much about the Christ. 
" God gave his only begotten Son ;; ; do not let 
your affections centre on anything else. Then, 
of course, you will join the church which you 
think nearest the truth ; but the motive of it and 
the meaning of it will be Christ. Be you sure 
that you do not rest satisfied with anything but 
the reception of God's utmost gift — the Lord 
himself. 

When I talk to you about the spring, or about 
the summer, — which is the utmost gift of the 
year, — I have not said all. I can go on to 
specify the things which belong to the summer — 
the blue sky, the fleecy whiteness of the clouds, 
the brooks, the song of the birds, and the per- 
fumed air. 

And so, when 1 have Christ, I have ever so 
many things. For instance, Christ gives us 
eternal life. You remember how he says : " I 



102 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

give unto them eternal life." When you receive 
Jesus Christ, then with him you have eternal 
life. Be sure you get the Scriptural idea of 
what eternal life is. 

" There is no death ; what seems so is transition." 

Death means the passing into the other life. 
Eternal death means life out of harmony with 
God. Eternal life is life in sympathy with Christ. 
The culmination of that life is heaven ; but we 
have the beginning of it here. Notice, it is in 
the present tense : " I give (not will give) eternal 
life." If you are a Christian, you are just as 
certain of heaven this moment as you will be 
when the palm of victory is in your hands and 
the robe of righteousness wraps you around. Do 
not be downhearted ; do not be wondering 
whether you are a Christian or not. But just 
ask yourself this question : " Do I really accept 
Jesus Christ as my Saviour ? Have I really 
and absolutely made myself over to him?" 
Then you have surely eternal life. There is not 
the most fearful and distraught soul here this 
afternoon who may not be absolutely sure of 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 103 

eternal life. You say you feel so and so. Well, 
suppose you do ; you are sick ; or, possibly, you 
are getting old, and the shadows are length- 
ening. Old people do not feel as well as when 
they were young. But your feeling does not 
make any difference ; if you really possess Jesus 
Christ, then what he gives is certainly yours. 
You need not bother about whether you are going 
to heaven. Certainly, you are going to heaven. 
" Neither shall any man pluck them out of my 
hand." Do not be troubled about your future, 
because you have taken him, and all is involved 
in the great gift. The gates of pearl will " swing 
inward for you"; the song of Moses and the 
Lamb will burst even from your lips. 

Well, another gift which we have in Jesus 
Christ is rest. How like a pillow for weary 
heads this promise has been for men : "Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest ! " Rest ! that is Christ's gift. 
It is possible for a man to be a Christian and yet 
not possess this inestimable gift. Just as those 
people who lived in that old castle were rich and 
did not know it. 



104 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

How many times I have thought of those 
words of Goethe : 

44 Rest is not quitting 
The busy career ; 
Rest is the fitting 
The self to one's sphere, 

44 'Tis the brook's motion, 
Clear, without strife, 
Fleeting to ocean 
After this life. 

44 'Tis loving and serving 
The highest and best ; 
'Tis onward, unswerving, 
And this is true rest." 

Rest is getting rid of friction. If it were not 
for the little passing annoyances, and the little 
infelicities of daily occurrence, how delightful to 
work ! For then work would have no friction. 
Jesus Christ means to give us just that rest now, 
in a measure, at least. I do not know anything 
that tells it better than these words of Miss 
Waring : 

44 A heart at leisure from itself 
To soothe and sympathize." 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 105 

Think of the words : "A heart at leisure from 
itself! " That is rest ! You cannot get any 
better idea of rest than that. You need not ask : 
"What do these people think about me?" or 
"How do I feel?" "A heart at leisure from 
itself" — this is what Christ means to give to you 
and to me. Do not you see what rest it is? The 
rest of forgiveness, the rest of our intellect (for 
he answers all questions), and the rest of our 
affections (for what nobler or sweeter object of 
love than he?). " Come unto me all ye that are 
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
Take my yoke upon you, and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls." There is the rest; but you 
do not get it because you do not take Christ's 
yoke upon you. The word "yoke" refers to the 
old Roman custom : a spear placed here, and a 
spear there and another spear laid across ; and 
the conquered people were made to pass under 
these spears ; and their passing under this yoke 
meant that the Roman people owned them abso- 
lutely. Then, if we take Christ's yoke in that 
manner, and do not keep back anything, do not 
you see how sure we are to find rest? The 



106 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

reason we do not find more of it is because we 
do not enough submit to him. We say : "There 
is a yoke — I will go through that ; and there is 
a yoke — I will go through that; but here is 
something: I wonder if I do not love this better 
than Christ; I wonder if I cannot keep this 
and still be a Christian ? " And so we are in 
the clash of reasons and counter reasons, and are 
not more than three-fourths under the yoke. 

Christ says we have in this great gift of God 
to us the gift of his Holy Spirit. You remem- 
ber how Christ said to the woman at the well : 
" If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have 
given thee living water." And the woman said : 
" Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well 
is deep." And the Lord said : " Whosoever 
shall drink of the water that I shall give himshall 
never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him 
shall be in him a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life." In the seventh chapter of John 
we find an explanation of these words of Christ. 
Let me turn to it and read : " In the last day, 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 107 

that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, 
saying, If any man thirst let him come unto me 
and drink. He that believeth in me, out of him 
shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake 
he of the Spirit which they that believe on him 
should receive ; for the Holy Spirit was not yet 
given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." 
Well, now, why do we not have more of the 
Holy Spirit? God has given him to us if we 
are Christians. Why is he not in us as a spring 
of water? Why are we so easily overcome — so 
weak ? A friend told me something that exactly 
illustrates this subject. He told me of a place 
from which a large hotel had been moved away, 
and on which a woman had now a dwelling house 
and a garden. There was only one trouble with 
this place: it was far from a spring, and the 
woman was obliged to go daily some distance for 
water. But she noticed a peculiar, damp spot in 
her garden ; nothing would grow there. It was 
an ugly patch, and she did not know what to do 
with it. She one day determined to investigate 
it; and she took with her a trowel and began 
to dig. She soon found some water, and still 



108 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

more water ; and, going on and on, she came to 
a brickbat, then an old tin can and sticks, and 
various other trash. She threw out all these 
things and found, still further down, a beautiful 
spring of water upwelling. She had it stoned 
up; and there upon her premises was a beautiful, 
clear, cool spring. The water had been trying 
to force itself up, but could not, because it was 
obstructed. 

So we have the Holy Spirit. The water of life 
is really ours ; yet prayerlessness and refusal to 
read the Bible choked this spring of the Holy 
Spirit which we really have. We have the gift, 
but we keep it choked. Let clean water run 
through, carrying away all that prevents recog- 
nition of spiritual things, and we shall have 
within us a well of water, springing up into eter- 
nal life. Is it not true that within us are many 
brickbats, old tin cans, and sticks that we ought 
to throw out? What a wonderful gift we have 
in Christ ! I might go on for hours searching 
these Scriptures for what we have in them. 

So, do not let us be paupers. Do not let us 
act as though we had no jewels, when we know 



THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 109 

we have. The people in George Macdonald\s 
story did not know their wealth ; but we do. 

This gift of God means that we should give 
something also to him. It is when Paul is 
urging the people to give that he breaks out : 
" Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift/' 

" Death worketh, 
Let me work too ; 
Death undoeth, 
Let me do. 
Busy as death my work I ply, 
Till I rest in the rest of eternity. 

"Time worketh, 

Let me work too ; 
Time undoeth, 
Let me do. 
Busy as time my work I ply, 
Till I rest in the rest of eternity. 

4 'Sin worketh, 

Let me work too ; 
Sin undoeth, 
Let me do. 
Busy as sin my work I ply, 
Till I rest in the rest of eternity.' * 

And may God bring us all into rest, through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 



(( 



IX. 
GOD MINE. 

THERE is nothing more important in the 
Christian life than to say, as Paul did : 
My God." When we have the summer we 
have many other things — the blue sky, the white 
encampments of the clouds, the tender look of 
nature, the songs of the birds, the lustrous at- 
mosphere, the genial summer shower, and a 
million other things with the summer. And so 
in the matter of religion, if we can say " My 
God," for God includes all beneficencies and all 
blessings. It is one thing to have God in the 
intellect, to know him and to recognize him as 
the Great Cause of causes, as the one who main- 
tains the balance of the universe, as the one who 
guides nations. But not in that way can we say, 
" My God." We may refer to God as our moral 
standard, by comparing our lives with the de- 
mands of his pure and holy law. But this is not 
110 



GOD MINE. Ill 

the best and truest way to possess God, for the 
result to us is gloom and awe rather than filial 
fear. When we so consent to God with oui 
heart that we feel him in real personal relation 
with ourselves, we can then say from our very 
deepest hearts, " My God." This is the relation 
in which Paul was constantly standing toward 
God, and it is noteworthy how constantly this 
expression appears in his epistles : " I thank my 
God that your faith is spoken of throughout the 
whole world " • "I thank my God always on 
your behalf"; "I thank my God upon every 
remembrance of you." Again, in the Epistle to 
Philemon (which is too little read, a beautiful 
Christian illustration of courtesy) we find these 
words : " I thank my God, making mention of 
thee always in my prayers." This personal 
appropriation was the habitual mood of the 
apostle, the constant note he was striking through 
all the changes of his career. When we can, 
from our hearts, with the sense of ownership, 
say " My God," then that possession gives us 
multitudes of other things, for everything is 
wrapped up for us in God. 



112 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

If we are able to say, with Paul, " My God," 
we shall have a thankful feeling. Paul's mood 
of thankfulness constantly springs out of this 
appropriation of God ; and we shall be thankful 
in whatever plight we may be. Paul wrote his 
Epistle to the Romans from Corinth, where he 
had a very hard time, being obliged to maintain 
himself at his trade of tentmaker, and in the face 
of all sorts of obstacles and difficulties gathering 
a church. 

Nowhere does our religion so often fail as in 
this matter of thankfulness. I am often sur- 
prised to see how, among us, the tone of Chris- 
tian life is so different from that of the New 
Testament. It is a rare thing in prayer meeting 
to hear the expression of thankfulness. I sup- 
pose we should be thankful if we were more 
thinkful ; for thankful means thinkful in the old 
Saxon. If we thought of God as being personal 
to ourselves, we should be thinkful of God, and 
therefore thankful to God. 

All through the Psalms you find suggestions 
of it, and learn that it is delightful to God's 
heart to have his children thank him. And we 



GOD MINE. 113 

can only truly praise him when in our deepest 
hearts we look up, and say, " My God." 

We shall surely have with this appropriation 
contentment. Contentment is the result of 
thankfulness, and when thankful we are full of 
content. Contentment in the Scriptural sense 
is a great thing. There is a kind of inertness 
which we sometimes call content — a sort of 
stupidity and callousness mistaken for content- 
ment. True contentment is not with attainment, 
but with allotment. Our hearts ought to be in 
chime with God, that being contented with him, 
we shall be sedulously trying to do for him all 
we can. With this appropriation comes " A 
heart at leisure from itself," and we are not 
greatly disturbed bv the attention to our circum- 
stances. A little fellow was told that he must 
be deformed for all his life. He said : " Well, 
it is all right. God has done it. My Father 
has done it. I love him. He loves me. He 
does all right." 

Contentment is a kind of inner rest. Some- 
times I have stood on a bridge. Here is a train 
coming in ; there, another going out ; there is a 

H 



114 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

train shunted off to a side track — it seems all 
confusion. Yet there is not all confusion. There 
is a train director and a lever. The director 
knows where every car is, and where it must be, 
and he manages all without clash and without 
chaos. Nothing can so minister to our happiness 
as to be able to say : li My God, my Guide, my 
Help, the one who manages for me." Then 
comes the placidity of contentment ; it is always 
so. And then, though there may be pain, the 
pang is taken out of the pain. Even with a 
ripple of sadness, deep in our hearts there is 
peace. 

I cannot feel 
That all is well when dark'ning clouds conceal 

The shining sun ; 

But then I know 
God lives and loves ; and say," since it is so, 

Thy will be done. 

I cannot speak 
In happy tones ; the teardrops on my cheek 

Show I am sad ; 

But I can speak 
Of grace to suffer ; with submission meek, 

Until made glad. 



GOD MINE. 115 

I do not see 
Why God should e'er permit some things to be, 

When he is love ; 

But I can see, 
Tho' often dimly, through the mystery, 

His hand above ! 

I do not know 
Where falls the seed that I had tried to sow 

With greatest care ; 

But I shall know 
The meaning of each waiting hour below 

Sometime, somewhere ! 

I do not look 
Upon the present, nor in nature's book 

To read my fate ; 

But I do look 
For promised blessings in God's holy book, 

And I can wait. 

I may not try 
To keep the hot tears back — but hush that sigh, 
4 ' It might have been ' ' ; 

And try to still 
Each rising murmur, and to God's sweet will 

Respond "Amen ! " 

It is possible that the person who wrote this 
poem was ruffled only on the outside, but smooth 
and calm within. There was an inventor once 



116 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

who was very much disappointed. He had 
worked for a long time on a model, and was just 
on the point of getting it patented, when he 
found that somebody else on the other side of the 
Rocky Mountains had anticipated him by a few 
davs. He said : i( Some dav I shall know whv 
I failed " ; for he knew that God had something 
to do with it. After awhile there came from 
England another and cheaper machine for the 
same work, and then he saw why he had failed. 
" For," he said, " if I had taken out a patent I 
should have lost money." So contentment is a 
settled conviction that God does best. 

From personal appropriation comes courage. 
And we need a great deal of courage. It is 
pretty hard to look through all we have to do. 
I sometimes feel discouraged. I am always most 
discouraged just before I get up in the morning; 
but as soon as I am up and get started the feel- 
ing goes. I suppose to all of us life sometimes 
looks too much for us, and we feel, " Oh, that 
I had the wings like a dove, for then would I 
fly away and be at rest V I think that David 
was not the only one who said a thing like that. 



GOD MINE. 117 

While the battle of Waterloo was raging, and 
while the French could not overcome the English, 
nor the English overcome the French, and when 
the balance seemed inclining toward victory for 
the French, and the English cause nearly lost — 
then a line of dust was seen in the distant hori- 
zon ; Blueher was coming up ; the Prussians and 
English together overcame the conqueror of the 
world. So, we need help; courage is almost 
gone; but when we can say, "My God," we 
know that if Bluclier does not come, something 
will come, and we can wait, resting on some such 
promise as this : " As thy day, so shall thy 
strength be." 

If we can say, "My God," we shall surely 
have constancy. Many of us act spasmodically. 
You cannot keep the teachers of the Sunday- 
school at it all the time. A class is gathered and 
becomes interesting ; then the teacher leaves, and 
the class is disintegrated. These spurting Chris- 
tians are a great trouble to the pastor ; but the 
consciousness of God as ours, as helping and 
caring for us, can make us constant. 

When we thus appropriate God, we shall have 



118 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

advancing sanctification. We shall be growing 
better all the time. We get better by personal 
contact with one purer and better than we. 
There is one companion who may be always ours, 
and this is God. He will enter into relations 
intimate and personal with every one of us; and 
if we come into such real contact, we are con- 
stantly growing better. A young man says : " I 
will be an artist " ; and he goes over to Europe 
to study, and comes into contact with the pictures 
of the great masters. He is a little discouraged at 
first ; but, as he holds himself in this contact, and 
studies these great works, there comes upon him 
more ability, and his eye gets to be further-seeing 
and his imagination becomes unclogged, and he 
can approximate more and more to what they do. 
" So we, beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, are changed into the same image from 
glory to glory." Our deepest need is not that 
we shall think of God as the Great Cause, or as 
the one who is set before us merely as our stan- 
dard ; but that we shall think of him as a per- 
sonal Friend, as our Hope and daily Comforter. 
Well, how can we say it? You remember 



GOD MINE. 119 

how, when a child at home, you sometimes had 
the consciousness of the possessions of your 
father and your mother, and of everything in 
the house. I remember I used to look around 
and say : " My book," " my horses," " my 
peaches" ; and clambering about the fences, say: 
" My fences." Yet they were not mine ; they 
were father's. I would appropriate these things 
whenever it was all right between father and 
mother and me, when I w T as trying to please 
them ; then I owned father and mother, and 
everything in the house. But don't you remem- 
ber how it was when conscious of wrong ? Then 
there came a chasm between your parents and 
yourself; but the moment that was put away 
and you came into right relations with your 
parents, then returned the feeling of possession. 
And when we are trying to please our Heavenly 
Father ; when we try to keep out from between 
us everything which prevents intimacy, then 
there comes the consciousness of possession, and 
we know that we have all his infinite heart can 
give. So let us put away all that hinders the 
shining of his smile Then we are thankful, 



120 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

then we are contented, then we have courage, 
then we have constancy. Then, beholding his 
face, we are changed into the same image more 
and more, and grow steadily in grace. The 
greatest thing we can ever say is : " My God." 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 

LET us try to-day to think concerning some 
of the relations in which the Lord Jesus 
Christ stands to us. It is a fact of our physical 
life that, while we are mediately dependent upon 
a great many things, we are immediately depend- 
ent upon the sun. Byron's dream was not all 
a dream, about the darkness wrapping the earth 
around, and the chill and gloom, because the sun 
was blotted out of the heavens. All possibility 
of life and growth hangs directly on the sun- 
beam. George Stevenson, who invented the 
first locomotive, was once standing on a terrace, 
when he saw the smoke and steam of a locomo- 
tive at a distance. Turning to a friend, he said: 
"Do you know what drives that engine?" 
" Well, I suppose some Newcastle driver." " But 
what makes the engine go ? " The friend con- 
fessed himself unable to answer. " Well, then, 

121 



122 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

I will tell you : it is the sun that drives that 
engine." The light and heat of the sun laid up 
in the coal fields millions of years ago, and now 
by the action of heat disimprisoned in the fire of 
the engine, makes the heat which makes the 
steam ; and it is the steam which makes the 
engine go. When we are carried along on the 
track, that which carries us is nothing but the 
sunbeam. As we warm ourselves before a coal 
fire, the heat is only sun heat. Because the heat 
of the sun millions of years ago found a recep- 
tacle among the plants of the carboniferous era, 
that same heat is now disengaged by bringing 
heat into contact with the carbon. We are warm 
because the sun is warm and because the sun was 
warm. The mill wheel turns by the push of 
water ; yet it is the sun, after all, which turns 
the wheel, because it is the power of the sun that 
lifts the water up into the sky which forms clouds 
and falls in rains, and then, percolating down the 
hillside, becomes rivulets. And the vital pro- 
cesses of our bodies also depend upon the sun. I 
suppose our nervous system is a kind of battery, 
though we do not know much about it. We 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 123 

only know that there is a strange something 
which carries our messages from the brain to the 
finger tips ; and this, no doubt, depends upon 
the sun. It is the sun that stores the germ in 
the kernel. It is the sun which lifts the plumule 
upward, and pushes the radicle downward. It is 
the sun which pumps the sap along all the chan- 
nels of the trees. If the sun were permanently 
eclipsed, there were only darkness and death. 

And this is the position in which our Lord 
stands to us. It would be interesting to take 
note of all the Scriptures in which the Lord is 
spoken of as a Sun. As we hang for physical 
life upon the great orb which is in the visible 
heavens, so we hang for spiritual life on Jesus 
Christ, who is our spiritual Sun. Keble's hymn 
is true : 

"Sun of my soul, my Saviour dear, 
It is not night if thou be near ; 
Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise 
To hide thee from thy servant's eyes. 

41 Abide with me from morn till eve, 
For without thee I cannot live ; 
Abide with me when night is nigh, 
For without thee I dare not die." 



124 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

In the first chapter of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians, thirtieth verse, there is a kind of 
condensed statement of the relations in which 
the Lord Jesus Christ stands to us. " Of him 
are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto 
us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification 
and redemption." If you think about it care- 
fully, you will see that these are very wide and 
including relations. It is as if the apostle had 
said : Well, everything you need you will find 
in Jesus Christ. " Of God, Jesus Christ is made 
unto us wisdom." Well, it is a wonderful thing 
to be wise ; it is a wonderful thing to have an 
absolutely unclouded source of wisdom. We 
cannot, because accustomed to it all our lives, 
conceive the boon it is to be sure there is some 
source whence we can get answers to the deepest 
questions which will arise about life and about 
death. For instance, very frequently we are 
much troubled and burdened, and it seems to 
us as if the path of life turned back upon it- 
self. So many say to me : "I do not see why 
God should treat me so ; there is that other per- 
son — he does not seem to be treated so." How 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 125 

frequently to this question, " Why ? " we get for 
an answer only an echo, and we are in darkness 
and trouble. Now, here is something that can 
help us greatly : we may be sure that we are not 
the sport of fate ; we are in the grasp of a wise 
Providence; and then in the darkness we shall 
get a gleam of light. We should be absolutely 
certain that there is around us a guiding and 
loving and special providence that lays its hand 
on us as a mother lays her hand upon her child. 
If Jesus teaches us anything, he surely teaches 
us this. He points us to the chattering company 
of sparrows (and they were just as numerous and 
pestiferous in Palestine as here, and two of them 
could be bought for a farthing), and he says : 
" Your Father remembers them ; are ye not much 
better than they ? " 

Years ago I was moving, and everything 
was turned up, and all the furniture was in 
tremendous disorder, and it was all as uncom- 
fortable as possible. Yet my little child was 
absolutely unconcerned amid all the disorder, 
because she knew that nothing that could harm 
her would come out of it all, for she had absolute 



126 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

trust in her father and mother. Well, we cannot 
tell why that thing is hedged up, and this thing 
gets askew, but if we are absolutely sure of a 
particular providence as special as the love of a 
parent for her child, we need not be anxious. 
And you get this assurance from Jesus. 

I find within myself instincts for prayer. I 
am in trouble ; my arms are very short, and, 
stretch them as I may, I cannot begin to reach 
the extent of the trouble. Then my instinct is 
to pray. Yet, how can I be sure it is of any 
use ? I want to know absolutely and certainly 
whether God does hear prayer. If I let Jesus 
Christ be made unto me wisdom, then I know. 

Then, there is this mighty question about the 
existence of the soul after death. It seems verv 
strange that we know so little about what is 
beyond this life. Sometimes I find myself trying 
to add together the items of knowledge concern- 
ing that other state, and they are very dim and 
very small, comparatively. I reason about it; 
but do I reason from right premises? Are the 
links unbroken, and do they lead to the right 
results? If I turn to Jesus Christ as mv wisdom, 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 127 

I know, for he says : "This day shalt thou be 
with me in Paradise," and "In my Father's 
house are many mansions" ; and we also read : 
"If our earthly house of this tabernacle be 
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
And so, if I let Christ be my wisdom, I may be 
shining with joy; but this life would not be 
worth the living; without the shining of Jesus 
Christ. 

This Scripture says, Jesus Christ is made unto 
us righteousness. I do not know of a better 
illustration of this than that wonderful storv of 
the prodigal son. When he came to himself, I 
have no doubt that his rags looked raggeder, 
and his filth looked filthier, and his distance from 
home still more distant. But he made his weary 
way back, notwithstanding his rags and scabs 
and filth, wondering whether when he reached 
his father's house he would be received. "But 
when he was yet a great way off his father saw 
him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on 
his neck and kissed him." And when he 
began to falter, " Make me as one of thy hired 



128 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

servants," the father broke in and said to his 
servants, " Bring forth the best robe, and put on 
him." This best robe was a shining white gar- 
ment, which covered the whole person, and when 
the boy put it on him he was all completely 
enwrapped, and you could not see the rags nor 
filth. Undoubtedly, he was pretty bad. Yes, I 
suppose he was ; but, as far as outward relations 
were concerned, he was in royal plight, and no 
servant could point the finger and say : " What 
a sight he is ! " So the Lord Jesus Christ treats 
us. We have all been in the far country, and 
were pretty well covered with rags and filth ; but 
when he comes to us he throws over us the "robe 
of righteousness." Jesus Christ "was made in 
the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin," and, 
though his nature were free from every tinge of 
depravity, yet was he made in our nature, and 
wrought out a righteousness absolutely complete, 
as to sin on the one hand, and as to expiating 
the doom attached to it on the other. And when 
I believe him he wraps me about with the robe 
of his righteousness, and I am justified ; the 
Lord has nothing to say against me. 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 129 

But, then, not only is the Lord made unto us 
wisdom and righteousness, but he is made unto us 
sanctification. Be sure he does not leave us in 
filth ; he sets to work to cleanse the inner foul- 
ness. Sanctification has to do with our internal 
cleansing. Christ, by the power of the Spirit, 
puts a new nature into us. He, by the power 
of the Spirit, fills us with love for himself. He 
holds us in contact with himself, and we, " be- 
holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
are changed into the same image from glory to 
glory." So that by-and-by, by sanctification, we 
get inwardly adjusted to the law. He is made 
unto us sanctification. 

This Scripture also says that he is made unto 
us redemption. This is a somewhat singular 
word. It is as if the apostle had exhausted 
every other word in his vocabulary, and now 
therefore uses this general word to include every- 
thing. 

Well, since he is all this, and he alone is all 
this, and since we can only receive all from him 
just as we receive life physically from the sun, 
we can easily see what ought to be the main pur- 



130 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

pose of our Christian life, the keeping ourselves 
always in the light of hirn. 

In our spiritual state, if we let clouds come 
between ourselves and Jesus Christ, we have a 
hard time. Prayer-meetings do not give comfort, 
and your private prayers do not amount to any- 
thing. What you have to do then is to sweep 
away the clouds ; for we have volition over these 
spiritual clouds. Our aim ought to be to keep 
ourselves in the shining vision of Jesus Christ. 
And don't you see that if you do that, it is like 
a sunshiny day in summer, with the blue sky, 
and the fragrance of flowers ? What is the end 
and aim of the Christian life ? Is it to have 
summer always shining down into your heart? 
Keep yourself always in this vision of Jesus 
Christ, and then all questions will get decided as 
to what you should do. 

If all this is true we ought to believe in a 
wide way and a great way toward Jesus Christ. 
Some people will believe toward him as to 
righteousness. They believe he forgives their 
sins, but they believe nothing else, and they get 
just as much as they believe and nothing else. 



WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 131 

They have the memory of a time when they 
were converted, and their mind reverts to that ; 
but they should believe toward God as not only 
wisdom and justification, but they should believe 
toward him as their sanctification. Just as the 
earth has a great faith toward the sun, whose 
beams will start the germs of vegetation, we need 
a great faith toward Jesus Christ. Well, we 
shall have it if we know more about Jesus Christ, 
and we shall know about him if we will read 
more about him in the New Testament. Lyte, 
who wrote that sweet hymn : 

41 Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," 
wrote also another hymn, less familiar, but of 
similar import. It is this : 

Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest, 
Far did I rove, and knew no certain home ; 

At last I sought them in his sheltering breast, 
Who opes his arms and bids the weary come. 

With him I found a home, a rest divine ; 

And since then I am his and he is mine. 

Fes, he is mine, and nought of earthly things, 
Not all the charms of pleasure, wealth, or power, 

The fame of heroes or the pomp of kings, 
Could tempt me to forego his love an hour. 



132 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Go, worthless world, I cry, with all that's thine 
Go ! I my Saviour's am, and he is mine. 

The good I have is from his stores supplied, 
The ill is only what he deems the best. 

He for my friend, I'm rich with nought beside ; 
And poor without him, though of all possessed, 

Changes may come — I take, or I resign — 

Content while I am his, while he is mine. 

Whate'er may change, in him no change is seen, 
A glorious sun, that wanes not, nor declines ; 

Above the clouds and storms, he walks serene, 
And sweetly on his people's darkness shines. 

All may depart — I fret not nor repine, 

While I my Saviour's am, while he is mine. 

He stays me falling ; lifts me up when down ; 

Reclaims me wandering, guards from every foe ; 
Plants on my worthless brow the victor's crown ; 

Which, in return, before his feet I throw, 
Grieved that I cannot better grace his shrine 
Who deigns to own me his, as he is mine. 

While here, alas ! I know but half his love, 
But half discern him, and but half adore ; 

But when I meet him in the realms above, 
I hope to love him better, praise him more, 

And feel and tell, amid the choir divine, 

How fully I am his, and he is mine. 



XI. 

UNION WITH CHRIST. 

I WOULD like to talk to you this afternoon 
on the " Union of the Believer with Christ." 
If any one will read the New Testament with 
that thought in mind, he will be surprised to find 
how full of this subject it is, and much more is 
revealed concerning it than we can distinctly con- 
ceive or clearly express. Yet no truth is more 
real than this, that if we are one with Christ 
we have been taken into a most real and indis- 
soluble union with our Lord. As one has put 
it: "The great fact of objective Christianity is 
Incarnation for atonement ; the great fact of sub- 
jective Christianity is union with Christ, whereby 
we receive the atonement." That is to sav, 
Christianity, looked at outside "ourselves, means 
that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself our 
nature in the Incarnation, in order that through 
obedience in it, and through expiation in it he 

133 



134 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

might work out for us complete atonement, by 
means of which we may be delivered from the 
remorse of our own conscience on the one hand, 
and the claims of a violated law on the other. 
But, looked at from an internal point of view, in 
the heart, in the life — the great fact around 
which all crystallizes is this fact of union with 
Christ ; and bv this union the external atonement 
is made real and vital to ourselves. I am very 
sure this is a truth, that the great fact outwardly 
is atonement, inwardly is union with Christ. 

The great fact begins with our regeneration. 
The apostle says : " If any man be in Christ he 
is a new creature; old things are passed away, 
behold all things are become new." He does not 
mean that any new faculties have been added, 
but he does mean that in regeneration the entire 
trend of our nature is changed ; so that, instead 
of flowing from God, it begins to flow toward 
God. There is a new direction of the faculties, 
and the soul now receives a new illumination of 
intellect, a new trend, and a new capacity. Then 
there is implanted in us the principle of the new 
life ; the germ begins ; and that new life is the 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 135 

Lord Jesus Christ, in some real way uniting 
himself with us. 

The union is declared in justification. By 
justification we are declared innocent. We are 
as if we had not sinned, since Christ has fulfilled 
the law for us, and we are so truly one with him 
that what belongs to him belongs to us. 

This union is still further proved by our sanc- 
tification. Since he dwells in us, and becomes 
one with us, we become more like him, and 
manifest more likeness to him. And the man 
who is growing more Christlike is the man who 
is showing forth this union with Christ. It is 
also proved by our perseverance. When our 
Lord Jesus grasps us he does not grasp us to let 
us go ; so our perseverance is more his grasp of 
us than our grasp of him. He maintains the 
union, and for this reason we shall at last awake 
satisfied with his likeness. The New Testament 
is very full on this point. It is singular how 
affluent the Scriptures are touching this truth, 
that we are really one with Jesus Christ. The 
divine omnipresence means that the whole God 
is everywhere, and at all times at every point of 



136 SATURDAY AFTEKNOOX. 

space; but this idea of the union of the believer 
with the Lord Jesus is something other than the 
doctrine of the divine presence. 

Then there is the divine sympathy with us, 
because Jesus " was tempted in all points like as 
we are, yet without sin " ; but this is something 
more than that. Every one of us is influenced 
by the Holy Spirit ; yet this union of the be- 
liever with his Lord is deeper than even that. 

Now, then, to come to the Scripture teaching; 
how full it is, and how various ! It is stated 
largely by figure, as such deep truths can hardly 
be shown except by figures. It is illustrated by 
the figure of the building and the foundation. 
Just as every stone of the building is united to 
and dependent on every other, and is therefore a 
part of that on which the building rests, so, in 
some such way is every one who trusts Christ 
brought into most intimate relation with him. 
In Ephesians, we read : " Built upon the founda- 
tion of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom 
all the building fitly framed together groweth 
unto a holy temple in the Lord. In whom ye 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 137 

also are builded together for an habitation of 
God through the Spirit." 

And then frequently, in the Scriptures, this 
union is illustrated by that closest union which 
we know anything about, that of the husband 
and wife. The Church does not mean any par- 
ticular denomination, but it means all of those 
who have come into this vital relation with him 
who is the invisible Head of God's chosen ones. 
It is often represented as the Bride of Christ. 
And, just as in marriage, those who are twain 
become one, and, in a deeper way than we can 
understand and express, are one, so our Lord 
Jesus Christ is declared to be one with the 
Church, which is his Bride. You remember the 
Oriental symbology employed to describe this 
union, and the brightness and blessedness re- 
served for those who are united to him in such 
intimacy, and into which he will surely lift all 
who have become a part of his bride. 

This union is illustrated in that other figure of 
the vine and its branches : " I am the vine, ye are 
the branches." Well, there is no union that we 
can think of closer than that between the branch 



138 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

and the vine. Through all the channels of the 
branch pulsates the sap from the vine, and the 
clusters hang upon the branches because there is 
this union with the vine. If you are going to 
try to conceive of deep union, you cannot possibly 
express it in a stronger figure than this, the 
branch and the vine. Yet our Lord Jesus 
Christ teaches just this union : " Without me ye 
can do nothing. Abide in me, and I in vou. 
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except 
it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye 
abide in me." 

And then this fact is further set forth in that 
figure of the union of the head and members of 
the body. We all know how intimate that 
union is; nothing can be closer. The head pre- 
sides over the body ; it is the seat of sensations 
for the body. We cannot come into the con- 
sciousness of sensation until it has been registered 
in the brain. The life of the head is the life of 
the body. If a limb be severed from its relation 
with the head, there is no longer life in the 
limb. So Christ says : "I am the head, and 
ye are the body." Every believer is in as real 



UNION WITH CHRIST, 139 

union with the Lord as is your body with your 
head. 

Then there are direct statements of this union. 
The believer is constantly spoken of as being 
" in Christ." You would be surprised to notice 
how often Paul speaks so. He says : " There is, 
therefore, now no condemnation to them who are 
in Christ Jesus." And, conversely, the Lord is 
in those who trust him. " I in them, and they 
in me." " I in you, and ye in me." This means 
a great deal ; it means more than I know. I 
only know it means this, that in a way deeper 
and more intimate than any figure can set forth; 
in a way closer and more real than any direct 
statement can tell ; in this way has every one 
who believes in Jesus Christ been lifted up into 
such real union with himself that he becomes 
one with his Lord. This is a great fact concerning 
the Christian life, and there are great inferences 
that follow from it. 

Consider the honor of it. We cannot con- 
ceive the honor, we cannot imagine the honor; 
but we shall understand more of it in the 
shining yonder. We shall then begin to know 



140 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

how much this intimacy of union means. Is 
it not a wonderful honor that the poorest and 
most ignorant, and most troubled and most bur- 
dened of us ; the one of us whom the world may- 
pass by, slighting the one, perhaps, most unsuc- 
cessful, the one whose life seems a failure — has, 
nevertheless, if he has given himself to Jesus 
Christ, the honor of being taken into this indis- 
soluble union with the King of the Universe? 
The branch and the vine ! Husband and wife ! 
I am sure we can get from such figures some 
glimpses here of what must be this union, and to 
what rank those who trust Jesus Christ are to be 
lifted. It is not a slight thing to be thus one 
with him who made all worlds (for " without 
him was not anything made that was made"), 
with him who sits upon the throne of the uni- 
verse, with him who for our sakes became poor. 
Since the Lord Jesus Christ has become our 
brother, there is formed between the believer and 
his Lord a mystical union. It is a vital union ; 
by which I mean a union of life, so that the be- 
liever can say, like the apostle : " The life that I 
now live in the flesh, I live bv the faith of the 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 141 

Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for 



me." 



Not only is it a vital union, but an indissoluble 
union. There has been formed between him and 
me a union which nothing can ever end. If I 
profess to have formed the union without the 
life that such union involves and should fall, it 
would not follow that I had fallen from grace, 
but that I had never been in grace. " They 
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck 
them out of my hand." i% Who shall separate us 
from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or 
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more 
than conquerors, through him that loved us." 
" Them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him." 

I know of nothing that can make the thought 
of life more sacred. Here am I, in union with 
my Lord. He " who was with God and who 
was God " he condescended to mv nature and 
became one with me — so reallv that he dwells in 
me and I in him. There is formed within us a 
union indissoluble; and what belongs to him 



142 SATURDAY AFTEBNOON. 

belongs to me ; and, on the other hand, what 
belongs to me belongs to him. 

One of the results of this union to the believer 
is that he is brought under the assimilating and 
transforming power of Christ's life, and is made 
purer and still purer. If you want to know 
beauty, study the highest expressions of beauty ; 
this principle is of wide application. Says the 
scented clay, when asked : " Why are you so 
filled with fragrance?" "I have been lying 
near the rose." We are only clay, yet we may 
have a divine fragrance because we are in contact 
with Jesus Christ. 

This assimilating power is active also toward 
the body. At last we shall have a body like 
unto his glorious body. I only know that the 
circle of the Lord's power is drawn around our 
bodies as well as our souls. The past resurrec- 
tion life of our Lord is especially interesting, 
because it gives us some faint idea of what that 
life may be. The life into which I enter will be 
a life like that, the likeness of Christ's "glorious 
body." 

I met this little leaf out of the daily life lately : 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 143 

u ( The work of our hands establish thou it.' 
I read the word over again, going back a little, 
'And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon 
us : and establish thou the work of our hands upon 
us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it/ 
1 The work of my hands day by day/ I said, 
almost scornfully, as I thought of the homely 
work my hands had to do — the cooking, the 
housework, the patching, the mending, the 
rough, hard work I sometimes had to put them 
to. And I smiled as I thought of such work 
being established forever. I smiled again almost 
bitterly as I thought: c It is established that my 
hands must work, if not forever, for all my 
earthly time/ c Please comb my hair now, 
mamma; the first bell is ringing/ and Neddie 
tapped my hand with his comb. I parted and 
smoothed my boy's tangled locks. i The work 
of my hands/ I said, and perhaps more gently 
than usual turned up my boy's face to kiss his 
lips as he went to school. 

" I turned to the sitting room, drew up the 
shades in the bay window so that my few gera- 
niums might have all the sun's ray they could, 



144 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

shook down the coal in the stove, dusted the 
chairs, straightened the table cover and books, and 
brushed the shreds from the carpet ; sighing over 
the thin places that the best arrangement of mats 
could not cover. The rooms looked neat and 
tidy. ' The work of my hands/ I repeated, me- 
chanically. Just then the sun shone out bright. 
It lit up my room like a kind smile. ' The 
beauty of the Lord our God/ I repeated, softly. 

" I went to my homely work in the kitchen. 
Patiently I tried to go through my every-day 
routine of duty. For I said to myself: 'If this 
is always to be the work of my hands, surely I 
must let the beauty of my Lord rest upon it/ 

" ' You look very bright to-night, wife/ said 
Will, when he came in after his day's work. 
1 Has it been an easy day ? ' 

" I thought of the cooking and ironing, of my 
tired hands and feet, and smiled as I said : " I 
had a good text this morning/ " 

Do you not see that the beauty of the Lord 
does rest upon even such humble work? Do 
you not see that your religion need not be a 
thing simply for prayer meeting, simply for 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 145 

Bibles or for closets ? Do you not see how, if it 
is small, his beauty does rest upon such service 
as that? Do you not know how, when somebody 
is sick at home, and the sickness is dangerous, so 
that the patient may be injured by being turned 
over to anv hired nurse, and the husband or the 
wife, or nearest friend must do the duty, every 
menial thing about the sick room is then trans- 
formed into a holy service. Then you do what 
otherwise the servants would do ; and you do it 
because of love to the sick one lying there ; and 
this love glorifies the meanest duty. Loving the 
Lord, we do for him everything we have to do. 
And then if our work be only smoothing out the 
children's hair, or putting mats over the worn 
places in the carpet, nevertheless, it we do it as 
toward the Lord, his smile rests on us, and the 
beauty of the Lord remains on us. I cannot tell 
you how often this text lifts the black out of the 
sky and puts blue in. Do you remember when 
anything goes against the grain, that if you do 
it as toward the Lord, his smile rests on you? 
And the consciousness of his smile is the sweetest 
thing in all the world. 



146 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Because of this union with the Lord, he is 
with us in our trials and in our troubles. When 
in New York, last week, one sent to me : "Come 
and see some one to whom you used to minister." 
And I said: u Yes." And I found her very 
aged, her hair as white as the driven snow, very 
pale and very sick. And she said : " Do you 
know how you once helped me?" I said : "No ! 
did I help you ? " And she said : " You told 
me of a little fellow whose father was moving his 
library up stairs, and he wanted to help his 
father; and he took a heavy dictionary, but 
could only carry it as far as the stairs, and then 
he could do no more. Then the little fellow 
cried from disappointment ; his father heard, 
came to him, lifted him up (book and all) and 
carried him where he could himself place the 
book on the shelf in the new library," And the 
woman said : "This is what the Lord has done 
for me. He has taken me and carried me — my 
sufferings and myself." "Well," T said, "do 
not fear about the future ; if the Lord has carried 
you so far, he will not fail you in the last mo- 
ment." " I know he will not " she said. 



UNION WITH CHRIST. 147 

Because of this union the believer may have 
assurance of his future salvation. If I am a 
member of Christ's body, then it is absolutely 
certain that he will bring me where he himself is. 

"If he in heaven has fixed his throne, 
He'll fix his members there. " 

A man is not drowned, though his feet are 
under water, if his head is above the water. The 
billows are not above the Lord, and he is the 
head. We shall not be overwhelmed. 

This, then, is a union vital and a union indis- 
soluble. He will transform us into his likeness. 
He will be with us in our duties ; will be with 
us in our sufferings, carrying us through them. 
He will not let us fail or fall. We are safe in 
union thus with him. 

Then it is our duty to cling to this union — to 
keep the consciousness of it. 

I noticed in the Park the other dav how the 
trees seemed to be th rusting themselves into the 
coming of the spring — pushing themselves into 
the warmer air. It seemed as if the buds on the 
branches were swelling a little to meet the spring. 



148 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

What we are to do is to hold ourselves in close 
connection with Jesus Christ. We are not better 
Christians because the sluices of this union are 
too much shut up. Cultivate this union, and we 
shall grow mightily in grace. Let us abide in 
Christ by a complete consecration of ourselves to 
him ; and then we shall grow in grace, and duty 
will be easy, and the pang will be taken out of 
pain, 



XII. 
THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 

THE early Christians, to whom the Epistle to 
the Hebrews was addressed, were in diffi- 
cult circumstances. I suppose it is impossible 
for us to conceive these difficulties. To accept as 
the Messiah, as the Promised One, as the One 
who was the substance of all the w r onderful and 
shining ritual that was going on in the temple ; 
to accept as the true Messiah the Nazarene who 
had been crucified not so long ago on the hill 
outside the city ; to give him worship and rever- 
ence, and to turn their backs upon the worship 
of the temple with which every fibre of Jewish 
patriotism was interw r oven, compelled the utmost 
sacrifice. 

I have recently been talking with a young 
man whose surroundings throw a little light 
upon the difficulty. This young man is of a 
Roman Catholic family in a distant country. 

149 



150 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

He has come here and has listened to the teach- 
ing of the Lord Jesus Christ, and has become 
convinced that salvation is not faith in any rite 
or church, but is faith in the Saviour, and that 
the thing for him to do is to accept and bravely 
confess it. As he has talked to me about con- 
fessing him, I have seen the difficulty. When 
he makes that decision, and turns his back on 
the church of his relatives, there will be coldness 
and misunderstanding; it will be the breaking 
up of his home, possibly. It seemed to him as 
if it were a very difficult cross ; and yet our 
Lord tells us if we love father and mother more 
than him, we are not worthy of him ; and the 
only thing for this man to do is to confess Christ 
and turn his back upon the absurdities of the 
church apostate. 

Such an instance as that helps us a little to 
understand what must have been the sacrifice 
demanded of the early Hebrew Christian. It 
struck very deeply into their lives, and thrust 
them from family, from friends, and, in many 
cases, from livelihood. It was not so wonderful 
that there should spring up in them danger of 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 151 

apostasy, of turning back ; that they should 
sometimes question whether, after all, the shining 
temple on Mount Moriah might not be the place 
of worship, and not the little despised company 
of Christians. When one became a Christian, 
the burial service was read over the person, the 
ancestral door was closed, and all communication 
with loved ones stopped. It was a very hard 
thing to be a Christian. What these early Chris- 
tians needed was some strong certainty of the 
divine presence and help; and this Epistle to 
the Hebrews is written to assure them that God 
would be with them even though they were con- 
fronted with such obstacles. In the closing 
chapter, the writer does not forget how much 
they needed the comfort of the certainty of the 
divine help, for as he is gathering up the last 
things to tell them, he is careful to say : "For 
he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake 
thee." 

We are not in such hard circumstances as these 
early Christians, and yet as they needed that 
comfort, we need it. This is a world, not fin- 
ished but in process ; and since it is a world in 



152 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

process, there must be trial in it. I was passing, 
not long since, by a great building, not yet com- 
pleted ; the street was filled with piles of materials, 
beds of mortar here and there, workmen hammer- 
ing at stones — all noise and confusion. But there 
was no real confusion, for all the diverse and noisy 
industry was grasped by the idea of the building 
into unity. Only the stones had to have ever so 
much hammering before they could be fashioned 
for their right place in the wall of the great 
building. And that is like our world. It is in 
process of building, and we therefore need to 
be sculptured that we may be fitted for the 
place the Divine Architect intends us to fill. 
And so trial must be in the world; we cannot 
escape it; it is in the nature of things. 

I have only just come from the funeral of one 
of the sweetest Christians I ever knew, a member 
of this church. When we laid her away in a 
distant cemetery, the cold was very bitter, and it 
seemed a hard, strange thing that she must be 
left there. No; she was not there. Only her 
body was there ; but we associate a person so 
with the body. She is in the wealth and glory 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 153 

of the shining city; but sorrow hangs heavy 
around the house from which she is gone. That 
is not an unusual experience; we either have 
passed through it, or shall. Death knocks with 
equal hand at the hovel of the poor or the door 
of the rich. We cannot keep our treasures in 
this world. We need the certainty of the com- 
fort of the divine help just as the early Chris- 
tians did ; and we may have it ; for as the Lord 
said to those early Christians, "I will never 
leave thee nor forsake thee," does he not say the 
same thing to us? That is the distinct promise 
of God, and his word cannot be broken. To you 
and to me, he says, whatever may come, be sure 
of this : " I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee." 

Let us think a little as to how God says this 
to us. I think it would be better for us all if 
we were more on the hunt for how God savs it 
to us in nature. Do you ever take a walk with 
a religious intent, to see if you can find evidences 
of God's care for you as you walk. You would 
be following the example of the Master if you 
did. That is a very significant passage where 



154 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

John sees Jesus coming to him, our version says, 
but the correct version is, where John sees Jesus 
taking a walk, as though our Lord were wont 
thoughtfully to walk. And certainly our Lord 
noticed nature — " Consider the lilies of the field. " 
A good many years ago, I was on the St. 
Lawrence river, and I thought I could go off 
and read on an island where I would be quite 
alone. I lay on the grass in the summer weather 
and read, and as I read my eye wandered from 
the page, and I saw a little harebell with the 
most delicate, finely colored petals, with the most 
hairlike stem ; so tenuous the stem was that it 
could hardly support, apparently, the slight 
weight of the flower. In the flower, I saw nest- 
ling a tiny drop of dew. When I saw this dew- 
drop in the cup of the frail flower, I could not 
help thinking how God does take care of things. 
Here is this little flower nestling among the 
grass, and yet God has not forgotten to minister 
to it, to minister what it needs. I read a lesson 
of wonderful help to myself about God's care 
and presence. I said to myself ; " If God so 
cares for this slight flower as that it does not 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 155 

miss its dewdrop, he will surely care for me." 
And the tender flower preached a really helpful 
sermon. 

I think it would be better for us all if we 
used such things often. There are multitudes 
of such things to see if we only look around us. 
The song sparrows teach me many a lesson ; they 
are such brave birds. Long before the grass is 
green and the buds begin to swell, if you will 
walk by the thickets in the park, you will hear 
the wonderful trill — so tender so sweet — of the 
sparrow. I would rather hear it than the classi- 
cal music ; I can understand the bird. Long 
before the sun has touched the earth I have stood 
by some thicket and heard the song sparrow, and 
the bird was just as brave as could be. It did 
not look like summer ; there was no sign of sum- 
mer around ; vet the bird trusted its instinct 
that the summer was surely coming. If in such 
chill weather the bird is so sure the summer will 
not desert it, I may be sure that the summer will 
not desert me. If you will listen, you will find 
that God has really said to us in nature : " I will 
never leave thee nor forsake thee." 



156 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

By distinct promise he says this to us, and to 
us much more than to those early Christians. 
The Bible those early Hebrew Christians had 
was the Bible of the Old Testament ; they had 
not much of the New Testament at that time, 
probably only as it was spoken to them by the 
Evangelists. I looked up some of the references 
about this passage. Away back in Genesis he 
says it to Jacob, who is in the wilderness with 
nothing but a stone for a pillow ; but God does 
not forget him, and this is hi&promise : "Behold, 
I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places 
whither thou goest, and will bring thee again 
into this land ; for I will not leave thee until I 
have done that which I have spoken to thee 
of." 

Then, again, when Joshua is about to take up 
a very onerous and difficult duty, Moses is giving 
him command over the children of Israel. By 
the way, that is a beautiful thing that is written 
on the bust of John Wesley in Westminster Ab- 
bey : " God buries the workers, but he carries on 
the work." It was so with these Israelites now; 
Moses is going, and Joshua is about to take his 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 157 

place, and God comes to him and says : " There 
shall not any man be able to stand before thee 
all the days of thy life : as I was with Moses, so 
I will be with thee : I will not fail thee nor for- 
sake thee." 

When Solomon is about to take up the king- 
dom from the trembling and aged hand of his 
father David, there is the same promise for him: 
" I will not leave thee nor forsake thee." 

The Psalmist is looking back on a long expe- 
rience, and this is the statement of his experience 
— it is a psalm of David, I believe : " I have 
been young, and now am old; yet have I not 
seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 
bread." 

We have the distinct promise just as those 
early Christians had, and what we want to do is 
that which they must have done if they were 
comforted with the certainty of the divine pres- 
ence and help — that is, believe the promise. The 
trouble with us is that we believe ourselves more 
than we do the promise. We go down into our- 
selves and pull ourselves to pieces and wonder 
why we feel so ; it would be a great deal better 



158 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

for us if we were to cease to regard our feelings 
and look out on the promise of God. If you 
take hold of the promise, the feeling would be 
all right. We too often put the cart before the 
horse. The true order is the faith first, and then 
the feeling appropriate to the faith follows, look- 
ing out of ourselves and taking hold of God's 
word ; for he hath said, and he said it by distinct 
promise : " I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee." 

And so also God has said " I will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee " by the gift of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. That is God's utmost gift. He 
can say no more. Having given us the Lord 
Jesus, since the greater always includes the less, 
he has given us in Christ everything we need, 
and therefore he has given us in Christ the cer- 
tainty of his help and presence. When you are 
discouraged and disheartened, and want to know 
if it is true that God cares for you and is with 
you, I think it would be a good plan for you to go 
away by yourself and open a Bible at the eighth 
chapter of Romans, and read the thirty-first and 
thirty-second verses : " What shall we then say 



THE CERTAINTY OP DIVINE HELP. 159 

to these things. If God be for us, who can be 
against us?" But how am I to know that God 
is for me? The apostle goes on to tell us. This 
is the reason : "He that spared not his own Son, 
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not 
with him also freely give us all things." Since 
God has given us Christ, he has given us every- 
thing we need — his presence and his help. If it 
ever seems to you as though he had not done so, 
turn back upon the fact that precisely as the 
sunlight gives everything that belongs to the 
day, so God in giving Jesus Christ has given us 
everything we need. Somebody has worked the 
problem out in a little poem : 

If I could only surely know 
That all the things that tire me so 

Were noticed by my Lord, — 
The pang that cuts me like a knife, 
The lesser pains of daily strife, — 

What peace it would afford ! 

I wonder if he really shares 
In all these little human cares, 
This mighty King of kings? 
If he who guides through boundless spaoe 
Each blazing planet in its place 



160 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Can have the condescending grace 
To mind these petty things? 

It seems to me, if sure of this, 

Blent with each ill would come such bliss 

That I might covet pain, 
And deem whatever brought to me 
The loving thought of Deity, 
And sense of Christ's sweet sympathy, 

Not loss, but richest gain. 

Dear Lord, my heart shall no more doubt 
That thou dost compass me about 

With s.ympathy divine. 
The love for me once crucified 
Is not the love to leave my side, 
But waiteth ever to divide 

Each smallest care of mine. 

I am sure, if we would just think about it, 
we should be able to discover that God's promise 
not to leave us nor forsake us has been fulfilled 
in the personal experience of every one of us. 
How many times I have heard people say like 
this : " If any one had told me beforehand 
that I could go through with the trouble T 
have gone through with, I should never have 
believed it. I should have sunk in the 
presence of it, and yet I have gone through, 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 161 

and I have been helped." Is that not the 
experience of some of you? Have you not 
found that when real stress came, somehow there 
was strength supplied ? Really, I think it is the 
verdict of your Christian experience that God 
does not leave you, does not forsake you. 

The way to live a strong, victorious life is to 
believe that he hath said " I will not leave thee 
nor forsake thee w j and the way to get the con- 
sciousness of the comfort of God's presence and 
help is just to lay hold of that promise, precisely 
as those early Christians had to do. You can 
see how they must have managed it, confronted 
by such difficulties and compelled to such sacri- 
fices. Here is the Hebrew Christian with home 
turned against him; parents hard; support, liveli- 
hood gone; alone and deserted. What is for him ? 
This is for him : God hath said, " I will never 
leave thee nor forsake thee." How is he to get 
the comfort of it? Just by believing what God 
says. That is the way for him, and we must get 
the comfort in the same manner. 

Since God has given us this promise, what 
follows? It follows that since we have such a 

L, 



162 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

God, we ought to give ourselves gladly aud 
lovingly in service ; for the author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews goes on to say : " Let your con- 
versation be without covetousnesss." That is to 
say, do not be thinking of yourself all the time, 
but serve. It has reference to money ; but it 
does not have entire reference to money. We 
may be very covetous in certain directions, though 
we are very generous with our money ; we may 
refuse to give ourselves in personal service. 
Since we have a God who does comfort and care 
for us, let us be ready to give ourselves in service. 

Since God has promised " I will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee," let us be content. " Be 
content," the author of the Epistle says, " with 
such things as ye have." That does not mean 
that you should be lazy ; that does not mean 
that, being in circumstances narrow, you should 
not want to get into circumstances wider; but 
that, being in circumstances strait, you are to be 
trustful and believing. 

Since God has said " I will never leave thee 
nor forsake thee," to the heart of such a God we 
can pray. Let us be prayerful. In everything 



THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE HELP. 163 

with prayer and supplication let us make our 
requests known unto him. Do not think any- 
thing is too little to talk to God about; do not 
think anything is too small, if it is hard for you, 
to claim God's interest. 

I read a little poem about an Eastern legend : 

Once in an Eastern palace wide 

A little child sat weaving ; 
So patiently her task she plied, 
The men and women at her side 

Flocking round her, almost grieving. 

" How is it, little one," they said, 

1 ; You always work so cheerily ? 
You never seem to break your thread, . 
Or snarl or tangle it, instead 

Of working smooth and clearly. 

41 Our weaving gets so worn and soiled, 

Our silk so frayed and broken : 
For all we've fretted, wept, and toiled, 
We know the lovely pattern's spoiled 

Before the king has spoken." 

The little child looked in their eyes 

So full of care and trouble, 
And pity chased the sweet surprise 
That filled her own, as sometimes flies 

The rainbow in a bubble. 



164 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

44 1 only go and tell the king," 

She said, abashed and meekly ; 

44 You know he said in everything M 

44 Why, so do we ! " they cried, " webrin^r 
Him all our troubles weekly." 

She turned her little head aside ; 

A moment let them wrangle ; 
41 Ah, but," she softly then replied, 
44 1 go and get the knot untied 

At the first little tangle ! " 

Oh, little children — weavers all ! 

Our broidery we spangle 
With many a tear that would not fall 
If on our King we would but call 

At the first little tangle. 

Oh, little children, and large children too, let 
us call on him at the first tangle ! We have 
right to, for he is a God who hath said : " I will 
never leave thee, nor forsake thee." We may 
have the comfort of the certainty of his presence 
and of his help. 



XIII. 

AN ANCIENT CHRISTIAN'S THOUGHT 
OF CHRIST. 

ONE Abercius was the pastor of the church in 
Hieropolis, way back almost under the 
shadows of the apostles' times. In the year 
1882, Mr. W. M. Ramsay came upon his tomb, 
which had been long unknown. On the tomb 
there was an epitaph written in coarse Greek 
characters, and a part of that epitaph was : 
" Abercius, by name, I am a disciple of the pure 
Shepherd, who feeds his herds of sheep on the 
mountains and plains, who has great eyes that 
look on all sides." This is beautiful ; and it is 
also significant of certain real and great truths 
which the early Christians held with greater 
tenacity than we are wont to hold them ; and yet 
those truths it is most needful that we ourselves 
keep constantly in mind. The first truth that 
comes out from this epitaph is that in the 

165 



166 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

thought of those Christians closest to the time 
of Christ, our Lord was intensely believed to be 
not dead but alive. This ancient Christian calls 
himself a disciple of the pure Shepherd who 
feeds, — that is to say, who is now doing so, — who 
has not left his disciples, but who is now with 
them and caring for them. 

It is remarkable how steadily these early 
Christians kept in mind this idea of Christ, not 
as one who was dead, but as one who is alive. 
In the Catacombs under the foundations of the 
City of Rome, where the early Christians were 
wont to lay their dead (there are as many as six or 
seven million graves in the Catacombs), you find 
rarely such thing as a representation of the cross. 
That would strike us first as something singular ; 
but the meaning of the fact is that the thought 
of the early Christians was not so much of a 
Christ upon a cross, as it was of a Christ to 
whom that cross was but a great incident, who 
had passed through the cross to death, and had 
mastered death in the resurrection. 

We may take to ourselves a healthful example 
from these ancient Christians. We cannot think 



ABERCIUS 7 THOUGHT OF CHRIST. 167 

too much of our Lord as our atoning sacrifice ; 
but it is possible for us to think too little of him 
as one who, while he did die, is now alive for- 
evermore, and has the keys of death and hell. 
What we need to do is to live more in the light 
that streams upon us from our Saviour's resur- 
rection. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not away 
from this world, but is in this world. When 
any one of the great teachers or leaders of men 
die, then, so far as they are personally concerned 
with this world, the world has lost them. Plato 
is dead, and as toward this world only his influ- 
ence remains ; Socrates is dead, and as toward 
this world only his influence remains ; Napoleon 
the Great is dead, and as toward this world onlv 
his influence remains. Those whom we have 
loved have gone hence, and as toward us only 
their influence remains ; they are in no sense per- 
sonally present. But our Lord Jesus Christ is 
present in the world by the Holy Spirit. He is 
not a distant Christ, not a Christ in order to find 
whom we must go on a long and difficult pil- 
grimage ; but he is a Christ for the daily trial, a 
Christ for the particular and crushing trouble, a 



168 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Christ for joy, a Christ for sorrow, a Christ liv- 
ing and personally present with us. 

Let the music of that old epitaph sink more 
into your hearts. Disciples of " the pure Shep- 
herd, who feeds his herds of sheep on the moun- 
tains and plains, who has great eyes that look on 
all sides." Believe more in a living Christ; be 
thankful that your sins have been forgiven 
through the atonement, but be just as thankful 
that, because Christ has mastered death in the 
resurrection, from him to you may flow all power, 
all inner strength, and peace, and joy. What 
we need to do, every one of us, is what these 
early Christians did so thoroughly — believe in a 
living Christ; one who was dead, but who is 
alive again. We think too much about our 
Lord as one who has gone away from us ; we 
should think of our Lord as one who is with us. 
Did he not tell the disciples, " I go away, and 
come again unto you." " If any man love me, 
he will keep my words : and my Father will love 
him, and we will come unto him and make our 
abode with him." He said in effect : i( I will send 
the Comforter, and he will be with you ; he shall 



ABEKCIUS' THOUGHT OF CHRIST. 169 

lead you, teach you, guide you." We are in 
contact with a present Christ, because we are in 
contact with a living Christ. 

From this epitaph of this ancient Christian, 
we get the idea that he believed in our Lord 
Christ as a providing Christ. (i I am a disciple 
of that pure Shepherd who feeds his herds of 
sheep" — that is to say, one who sees his sheep, 
where they are, who they are, what they are 
doing, and what they need. How beautiful the 
truth, found away back here in the shadows, 
expressed with a kind of rude poetry, "the Shep- 
herd with great eyes who sees on all sides." 
Since that is so, you and I cannot escape notice. 
" I know my sheep, and am known of mine." 

In wonderfully beautiful ways does this come 
out in the remains that we have of the early 
Christians. For instance, if you go into those 
Catacombs, and study the frescoes, or if you go 
into museums where the rude frescoes have been 
gathered, you will see how this truth of the 
regarding Christ, the one who with great eyes 
sees on all sides, comes steadily out. A very 
favorite picture in these rude frescoes is the pic- 



170 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

ture of the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew 
children walking in it, and the form of a fourth 
by their side. How much that meant to those 
early Christians, who had seen their friends 
scalded with pitch, and set up in Nero's gardens, 
and lighted as torches, while his furious and 
frightful sports went on ! What a revelation to 
them of the regarding Christ that ancient story 
would be ! Another of these frescoes is a picture of 
Daniel in the lion's den, unharmed amid the wild 
beasts. We can see how much that must have 
been to those early Christians who had seen the 
lions leap from their cages out into the arena to 
smite down the aged and young martyrs. With 
what relief would that ancient Scripture story 
come to them, as illustrating the fact that this 
Shepherd with great eyes saw on all sides, saw 
them in their trouble, in their distress, in their 
martyrdom. 

When you look at the inscriptions of the Cata- 
combs, you find this constantly coming out : This 
loving, regarding Shepherd is not a shepherd 
who fails us in the death hour, but is one who 
gives us his own life. Nothing is more startling 



ABERCIUS' THOUGHT OF CHBIST. 171 

than the difference between the heathen inscrip- 
tions upon tombs and the inscriptions upon early 
Christian tombs. Here are a few of the heathen 
inscriptions : 

"Farewell, oh, farewell! O most sweet, for- 
ever and eternally farewell !" 

" Our hope was in our boy — now all is ashes 
and lamentation." " Fortune makes many 
promises, but keeps none; live for the present." 
But in the Christian inscription you find a light, 
a peace, a joy, and a certain hope and faith in 
the regarding Shepherd : 

14 Fructuosus, thy soul is with the just.* ' 
" Constantia, ever faithful, went to God." 
" Eternal peace be to thee, in Christ.' ' 
" Juventianus lives.' ' 

What a challenge against death sounds in this 
simple inscription on one of those early graves ! 

How sure these early Christians were that the 
Shepherd regarded them, and went with them 
through the dark valley, leading them into the 
better and truer and higher life beyond. 



172 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

In the symbols of this time, the same truth 
comes out — their certainty that the Shepherd 
with large eyes, who saw on all sides, held them 
each one in his vision. The dove betokens the 
presence and the blessing of the Holy Spirit ; the 
ark betokened safety amid all storms ; the anchor 
betokened steadfastness, though the tempests blow 
terrifically. 

We may well learn over again some of these 
truths which were so precious to these early 
Christians. We hold them, but not as deeply, 
not as reallv as thev did. Christ lives, Christ 
protects, Christ regards. " He is the pure Shep- 
herd, feeding his sheep on the mountains and 
plains, who has great eyes that look on all sides." 
If that is true, our living Christ regards you and 
me ; and surely it is true, for precisely this is the 
teaching of Scripture. This makes prayer real. 
How easy it is to pray into the heart of a Christ 
like this ! We do not pray to mechanism, to fate, 
to destinv ; that would be useless : but we do 
pray into the sensitive, loving heart of such a 
Shepherd as this. If he is One who sees on all 
sides, you and I can pray to him about every- 



ABEKCIUS' THOUGHT OF CHKIST. 173 

thing that troubles us, and everything that inter- 
ests us. Do not let us restrict the area of prayer ; 
do not let us think we may pray about this or 
that, but not about the other. Let us remember 
that the apostle tells us with prayer and suppli- 
cation concerning everything we are to make our 
wants known unto God, and so have the peace of 
God a constant sentinel around our hearts. 

There is plenty to discourage us in ourselves. 
In myself I find an evil nature; in myself 
I find a wayward and a weak will; in myself 
I find only partially sanctified affection. The 
confession of the apostle is the universal con- 
fession : " For that which I do I allow not : 
for what I would, that do I not; but what I 
hate, that do I " There is within us the con- 
sciousness of a struggle; we are in a campaign ; 
we have not yet entered into the triumph and 
into the peace ; and when we look at ourselves 
there is every reason for discouragement; but 
when we keep our eye fastened on this pure 
Shepherd, the Loving One, the Providing One, 
the Regarding One, what reason for encourage- 
ment ! From ourselves let us look away to him ; 



174 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

let us heed the inj unction of the Scripture, 
"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about 
with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily 
beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the 
author and finisher of our faith." For every 
look at yourself, give ten looks to Christ. Be 
sure you have that proportion ; when you intro- 
vert, there is only discouragement ; from yourself, 
look upward and outward. 

Since we have such a Shepherd, how sweet to 
him is service, and even though our service be a 
poor sort, as it seems to us, he rightly interprets 
our motives and notices what we do for him. 

Here is the truth in a most beautiful poem : 

I was sitting alone in the twilight, 

With spirit troubled and vexed 
With thoughts that were morbid and gloomy. 

And faith that was sadly perplexed. 

Some homely work I was doing 

For the child of my love and my care, 

Some stitches half wearily setting 
In the endless need of repair. 



ABERCIUS' THOUGHT OF CHRIST. 175 

But my thoughts were about the building, 

The work some day to be tried ; 
And that only the gold and the silver 

And the precious stones should abide. 

And remembering my own poor efforts, 

The wretched work I had done, 
And even when trying most truly, 

The meagre success I had won ; 

4 ' It is nothing but wood, hay, and stubble," 

I said : " It will all be burned — 
This useless fruit of the talents 

One day to be returned. 

" And i have so longed to serve him ; 

And sometimes I know I have tried ; 
But I'm sure when he sees such a building, 

He will never let it abide." 

Just then as I turned the garment, 

That no rent should be left behind, 
My eye caught an odd little bundle 

Of mending and patchwork combined. 

My heart grew suddenly tender, 

And something blinded my eyes 
With one of those sweet intuitions 

That sometimes make us so wise. 

Dear child ! she wanted to help me ; 

I know 'twas the best she could do ; 
But oh ! what a botch she had made it, 

The gray mismatching the blue ! 



176 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

And yet — can you understand it ? 

With a tender smile and a tear, 
And a half-compassionate yearning, 

I felt her grow more dear. 

Then a sweet voice broke the silence, 
And the dear Lord said to me : 

44 Art thou tenderer for the little child 
Than I am tender for thee ? " 

Then straightway I knew his meaning 
So full of compassion and love, 

And my faith came back to its refuge, 
Like the glad returning dove. 

For I thought, when the Master Builder 
Comes down his temple to view 

To see what rents must be mended 
And what must be builded anew, 

Perhaps, as he looks o'er the building, 
He will bring my work to the light, 

And seeing the marring and bungling 
And how far it is from right, 

He will feel as I felt for my darling, 
And will say as I said to her : 

41 Dear child ! she wanted to help me 
And love for me was the spur. 

44 And for the real love that was in it, 
The work shall seem perfect as mine ; 

And because it was willing service 
T will crown it with plaudit divine." 



ABEKCIUS' THOUGHT OF CHKIST. 177 

And there in the deepening twilight, 

I seemed to be clasping a hand, 
And to feel a great love constrain me 

Stronger than any command. 

Then I knew by the thrill of sweetness 
'Twas the hand of the Blessed One, 

Which would tenderly guide and hold me 
Till all my labor is done. 

So my thoughts are nevermore gloomy, 

My faith no longer is dim : 
But my heart is strong and restful 

And mine eyes are unto him. 

He is such a loving, regarding Shepherd, the 
ic One with the great eyes who sees on all sides/' 
that he looks at motive more than at outward 
deed. He interprets outward deed by the motive 
out of which it springs, and therefore understands 
the service perfectly. If it is a service that 
springs out of love, no matter how poor, it is 
beautiful in his vision — the vision of him who 
sees on all sides. 

Then, if it be true that this Shepherd of ours 
is a Shepherd loving, a Shepherd providing, a 
Shepherd regarding, we shall not miss our way : 
he will surely bring us to the consummation. 

M 



178 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

We would understand just why along such 
strange paths he leads, but he knows where the 
green pastures are, and where the still waters flow. 
It is that our souls may be refreshed that he leads 
us so strangely ; we shall reach at last the better 
and the brighter country. He who sees on all 
sides can make no mistake. We are in safe 
guidance ; let us trust ; let us be glad ; let us 
patiently follow. 






XIV. 

OUR "DAKEEL." 

I GOT new light upon some passages of Scrip- 
ture when I heard of an Eastern custom of 
hospitality. An Arab, surrounded by enemies 
and hard pressed, finding he cannot save himself, 
has one resource left : he may call the name of 
some sheikh, whom he will heuceforth serve. 
Then the enemies must each seek to bring the 
fugitive into the presence of this sheikh. The 
moment the sheikh (his "Dakeel") sees him, he 
is pledged to take him under his protection. This 
custom brought to mv mind the words, " The 
name of the Lord is a strong tower ; the right- 
eous runneth into it and is safe w — finding safety 
in his Dakeel. " The righteous runneth into it 
and is safe." The Lord is stability. His name, 
Jehovah, holds infiniteness of meaning ; but I 
suppose the translation in Exodus is as good as 
can be found : "I am that I am." lam the 

179 



180 SATUKDAY AFTERNOON. 

One who always is, always will be, and the One 
who remains. The underlying idea is stableness. 
Everything in this world is in constant flux and 
flow. Our life is passing ; even the world itself 
is a passing world. Standing in the vale of Cha- 
mouni, looking at the sharp, sky-piercing peaks 
of Mt. Blanc, it would seem that if anything in 
the world were stable, these were stable. Yet 
all the while these mountains are changing. 
Frosts bite into them and cause disintegration ; 
the glaciers carry with them the debris of the 
rocks ; the soil is spread upon the plain below. 

Our plans are ever changing ; obstacles block 
our way ; we have disappointment instead of fru- 
ition. As life goes on, how short it seems ! The 
vears take to themselves added swiftness. 



'But a week is so long ! " he said, 
With a toss of his curly head. 

44 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven ! 
Seven whole days ! Why, in six, you kirow 
(You said it yourself— you told me so), 

The great God up in heaven 
Made all the earth, and the seas, and skies, 
The trees and the birds and the butterflies. 
How can I wait for my seeds to grow? 



OUR "DAKEEL." 181 

,4 But a month is so long ! " he said, 
With a droop of his boyish head. 

4fc Hear me count, one, two, three, four. 
Four whole weeks, and three days more ! 
Thirty-one days ! and each will creep 
As the shadows crawl over yonder steep ; 
Thirty-one nights ! and I shall lie 
Watching the stars climb up the sky. 

How can I wait till a month is o'er? 

"But a year is so long! " he said, 
Uplifting his bright young head. 

44 All the seasons must come and go 
Over the hills, with footsteps slow — 
Autumn and winter, summer and spring. 
Oh, for a bridge of gold, to fling 
Over the chasm, deep and wide, 
That I might cross to the other side, 
Where she is waiting — my love, my bride 1 

41 Ten years may be long ! " he said, 

Slowly raising his stately head. 

44 But there's much to win, there's much to lose: 

A man must labor, a man must choose, 
And he must be strong to wait. 

The years may be long ; but who would wear 

The crown of honor, must do and dare. 
No time has he to toy with fate 
Who would climb to manhood's high estate. 

44 Ah 1 life is not long," he said, 
Bowing his grand white head. 



182 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

" One, two, three, four, five, six, seven — 
Seventy years ! as swift their flight 
As swallows cleaving the morning light, 

Or golden beams at even. 
Life is short as a summer night, 

How long, God, is eternity ?" 

But God remains. He is the same prayer- 
hearing God, because he is Jehovah, " the one 
who remains." 

He is a Strong Tower because he is the Justi- 
fying One. One of his sweetest names is found 
in Jer. 23 : 5, 6, "Jehovah Tsidkenu," The Lord 
our Righteousness. " I will raise unto David a 
righteous branch, and a king shall reign and 
prosper. In his days Judah shall be saved, and 
this is his name whereby he shall be called — the 
lord OUR righteousness." When we think 
of ourselves and of our sinful condition, we need 
to feel that our Lord justifies us by imputing to 
us his own righteousness so that we stand com- 
plete in him. 

A word used for sin is transgression. It means, 
to go athwart. How many times when God has 
said " Thou shalt," we have said " No " to God, 



OUR *' DAKEEL. 183 

have gone athwart God's law ? How many of us 
are transgressors ? All of us. 

Iniquity is a word full of significance. Our 
will should lie parallel with God's demands ; but 
it often does not. Our life is unequal to them. 
There is inequality, iniquity. 

That other word which is used to set forth the 
meaning of sin — wrong — means wrung. How 
often have we allowed ourselves to be wrung out 
of our convictions of duty into that which is 
contrary to them ! We must every one say, as 
the Publican, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." 
How can we ever meet God, how T can we call him 
" Abba," how can we close the chasm between 
our sinfulness and his purity ? Our answer is 
found in this beautiful name : " The Lord our 
Righteousness." We had sinned, and in some 
sense Jesus Christ stands in our place. Nothing 
in the world will satisfv the demands of the 
human heart but the doctrine of a Substitutionary 
Atonement. Nothing is found against us, since 
he has accepted for us what we deserved. 

That name implies also the righteousness of 
Obedience — obedience for us. The law demands 



184 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

that we keep the law ; but we do not keep the 
law. So Jesus has satisfied the law, being " made 
in the likeness of sinful flesh." In this respect, 
then, of obedience, also, his righteousness is com- 
plete. So we may, when in the power of our 
enemies, call upon the Lord, our Dakeel, and be 
safe. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of 
God's elect?" " We are complete in him." 

" Jehovah Shalom " — the Lord is Peace. Dis- 
aster and destruction were all over the land. The 
Israelite was ground down. He had to hide even 
to get a little bread. And the Lord commanded 
Gideon to " Go and save Israel." And when 
Gideon feared, God said, " I will be with thee" ; 
and then Gideon accepted the duty. He built 
an altar, and called it Jehovah Shalom. 

Two sticks placed one across the other is a 
cross, But place them parallel, and there is no 
cross. When we surrender our wills to God, 
when we make his will ours, then there is the 
shining blessedness of the soul within. Then 
we say, " Jehovah Shalom " "God is peace." 

How can we run into the name of the Lord ? 
By thinking more of him than of the things 



OUR "dakeel." 185 

that bother us. I remember riding once on 
horseback over a very rough road, and yet I did 
not think much of the roughness, because I was 
all the time thinking of the fine prospect I was 
to see at the end. So we need not think of the 
spiritual difficulties and dangers, but keep our 
thoughts ever on the Lord, the changeless One, 
the peace-giving One, and we shall be safe. 

Further, we must run into the Lord, as our 
Dakeel, by prayer. If this text does nothing 
more for you than just to get into your thought 
more really and more deeply the determination 
that " by prayer and supplication you make 
known your requests unto him," it will be much. 
Concerning everything, you may talk to God, 
may run to him as a strong tower. Do not stop 
to ask if you may pray about a material thing. 
The Lord awaited the disciples with a fire 
kindled and fish laid thereon, and bread. So 
the Lord considers our material wants, and we 
pray about everything; and in that way we 
may run into the name of the Lord and be safe. 

Another way to do this is actually to do it. 
And there is the trouble with most of us. We 



186 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

don't do it. We want to, and we mean to ; but 
when it comes to the actual thing, we don't do 
it. Say, " Lord Jesus thou art a strong tower, 
and I am a persecuted soul. There are all sorts 
of Amalekites about me inwardly and outwardly, 
and there are ever so many burdens on my back. 
Now, Jehovah justifying, Jehovah delivering, 
Jehovah providing, Jehovah my peace, I accept 
thy grace." And let us actually do it, and 'we 
shall find that like a strong tower of defense will 
be our Lord. 

And so at last, in some measure, we shall be 
able to sing and feel the sentiments of about 
the sweetest hymn concerning the Christian life 
to be found in any literature. It is that of Miss 
Waring : 

Father, I know that all my life 

Is portioned out for me, 
And the changes that are sure to come 

I do not fear to see, 
But I ask thee for a present mind, 

Intent on pleasing thee. 

I ask thee for a thoughtful love, 
Through constant watching wise, 



OUR "DAKEEL." 187 

To meet the glad with joyful smiles, 
And to wipe the weeping eyes ; 

And a heart at leisure from itself, 
To soothe and sympathize.' ' 

[And we shall have it, if we make the Lord 
our strong tower.] 

L would not have the restless will 

That hurries to and fro, 
Seeking for some great thing to do, 

Or secret thing to know, 
I would be treated as a child, 

And guided where I go. 

Wherever in the world I am, 

In whatsoe'er estate, 
I have a fellowship with hearts 

To keep and cultivate ; 
And a work of lowly love to do 

For the Lord on whom I wait 

So T ask thee for the daily strength, 

To none that ask denied, 
And a mind to blend with outward life, 

While keeping at thy side ; 

[You are not to be a John the Baptist.] 

Content to fill a little space 
If thou be glorified. 



188 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

And if some things I do not ask 

In my cup of blessings be, 
I would have my spirit filled the more 

With grateful love to thee — 
More careful — not to serve thee much, 

But to please thee perfectly. 

[Look out for your love, and the service will 
be well enough.] 

There are briars besetting every path, 

That call for patient care ; 
There is a cross in every lot, 

And an earnest need for prayer ; 
But a lowly heart that leans on thee 

Is happy anywhere. 

In a service which thy will appoints 

There are no bonds for me ; 
For my inmost heart is taught u the truth " 

That makes thy children " free ;" 
Aiid a life of self-renouncing love 

Is a life of liberty. 



XV. 
PAUL'S " CAN." 

PAUL, in his Epistle to the Philippians, 
says : " I can do all things through Christ 
which strengtheneth me." What a jubilant 
word that was ! He was at this time living in 
Rome in a hired house. But that does not 
suggest to us, living as we do, the reality. When 
we speak of a hired house, we think of a house 
with several rooms and some largeness and 
comfort. That was not the case with the 
apostle's hired house, which he lived in at Rome. 
In Rome, the people spent most of their time 
outdoors, in the Forum, in the Campus Martius, 
in the bath. The houses were more like the 
tenement houses of New York than anything 
else; they were built so high that during the 
reign of Augustus an edict was passed restricting 
their height to twelve stories. The cities in 
those days were built compactly. That was 

189 



190 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

necessary because they must be defended and 
surrounded by walls. It was a very damp and 
foul-smelling place, this hired house of PauPs, 
if it was in the Jewish quarter of the city, as it 
probably was. Even now that section is almost 
the most stenchful place in the world. So in 
this very mean sort of a place, Paul was a 
prisoner for something like two years, and I 
suppose never stepped beyond the threshold of 
the door. He was under the Praetorian guard, 
the elite corps of the Roman army. One of these 
was detailed to watch him ; he must be chained 
by the wrist to one of them. The soldier would 
get through his watch and go out, but the apostle 
stayed there about two years. I suppose the 
poorest person in this city lives in a better place 
than the apostle's hired house in which he dwelt 
so long during his first captivity in Rome. In 
such circumstances of discomfort, he sends out 
this jubilant word of his. He tells us in the 
last chapter of Philippians, which is the most 
joyful letter he wrote : " I can do all things 
through Christ which strengthened me." It is 
the song of a triumphant life. 



PAUL'S "CAN/ 191 

Paul's " can " does not come from living 
easily. The aptest symbol to me of a merely 
easy life is a mass of sea weed. Many a time, I 
have seen it dashed upon the waves — just a mass 
of weed that goes anywhere, wherever the winds 
may blow it, or the tides may toss. That is the 
best symbol of a merely easy-going life; it 
means nothing; it takes root nowhere; it is 
merely passive and lacks organization. No true 
life can ever be lived in that way. Yesterday, 
I was walking In the spring weather, under the 
trees, in the country. I was looking at some of 
the just sprouting trees. It is by no means an 
easy-going life that a tree has, for the acorn must 
fall to the ground, and then the swelling con- 
tents must burst the hard, brown capsule, and 
then down into the earth the root must go, and 
forth out of the earth the plumule must push 
itself, and then it must go into contest with all 
sorts of things — with the winds, w T ith the 
shadows of the great trees over it, with this 
hostile thing and that hostile thing. Still, not- 
withstanding all this, and in contest with all this, 
the germ must push its root downward and its 



192 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

plumule upward, until it puts out branches, and 
then hangs leaves on the branches; and so 
pushes on and up until it gets to be a pillared 
monarch of the forest — a very different sort of 
thing from the sea weed. Anything that means 
value always comes out of contest. PauPs life 
was a life of contest. His life was not that of 
the sea weed, but that of the strong oak, which 
can reach its dignity only through contest. 
Whatever gets up, must struggle up ; and this is 
true of the Christian life. If you are going to 
be dashed here, there, and yonder, — if you do 
not thrust the roots of your life down deep in 
truth, do not seek to push up more nobly into 
higher and purer living, — you never can say the 
apostle's " can." It has no part in the life that 
is merely easy-going. Every real life is one 
that comes out of difficulty. 

Also, this " can " of PauPs does not come out 
of living heedlessly, that is to say, without a 
purpose. Of course, you must know how strin- 
gently PauPs life was girded with a purpose; 
there was one thing that he was determined to 
do. He tells us what it was here in this Epistle 



PAUL'S "CAN." 193 

to the Philippians : " Brethren, I count not 
myself to have apprehended." The apostle had 
been a Christian twenty-five years, yet he counted 
himself not yet to have apprehended. Never 
swell yourself up with any such miserable notion 
as that you have reached perfection. " I count 
not myself to have apprehended ; but this one 
thing I do, forgetting those things which are 
behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
which are before, I press toward the mark for 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." The apostle's life was one full of 
purpose. He meant to do, and therefore he said 
"lean do." 

This " can " does not come out of a life that 
is not filled with distinct attack on evil. I am 
sure that the Apostle Paul was troubled with a 
besetting sin ; indeed, he as much as tells us that 
he had a besetting sin in that wonderful seventh 
chapter of Romans : " For I know that in me 
(that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing. 
For to will is present with me; but how to per- 
form that which is good I find not." One of the 
apostle's troubles was a tendency to great impa- 

N 



194 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

tience. You find that in an indirect way coming 
out. For instance, here, in the twenty-third 
chapter of Acts, when the high priest commanded 
them that stood by to smite him on the mouth, 
PauPs impatience gathered itself up, and he burst 
out : " God shall smite thee^ thou whited wall ; 
for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and 
commandest me to be smitten contrary to the 
law?" Paul was a very alert man, strong with 
energy. He could not brook oppression, and 
when men went against him, his tendency was 
to smite them with quick, sharp speech. (There 
may be people living yet who are like the apos- 
tle in this respect.) But he did not let this go 
on ; he struggled against this besetting sin, and 
in the ninth chapter of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians he tells us how: "And every man 
that striveth for the mastery (Paul wanted to 
master himself) is temperate in all things. Now 
they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we 
an incorruptible. I therefore run not as uncer- 
tainly (the figure is of one running in the arena, 
who takes straight course for the goal). So fight 
I, not as one that beateth the air ; but I keep 



PAULS "CAN. 195 

under my body and bring it into subjection." 
So with all the saints. The apostle's " can " does 
not come out of a heedless life ; a life without 
strong purpose does not see and seize and defi- 
nitely strike at that which antagonizes the pure 
and true. 

Dr. Culross, in his most interesting book on 
the Apostle John, says: "Naturally and origin- 
ally volcanic, capable of profoundest passion and 
daring, he is new-made by grace, till in his old 
age he stands out in calm grandeur of character 
and depth and largeness of soul, with all the 
gentlenesses and graces of Christ adorning him 
— a man, as I image him to myself, with a face 
so noble that kings might do him homage, and 
so sweet that children would run to him for his 
blessing." 

Do you suppose that John reached any such 
grand and transformed character as that without 
struggle. 

Paul's "can" does not come out of a prayer- 
less life. How often Paul writes to his friends 
that he is praying for them, and asks them to 
pray for him. It is quite possible, however, for 



196 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

us to be prayerless and yet be praying all the 
time. Dr. James Hamilton has an account of a 
Scotchman who had but one prayer. He was 
asked by his wife to pray at the bedside of their 
dying child. 

The good man struck out on the old track, and 
soon came to the usual petition for the Jews. As 
he went on with the time-honored quotation, 
u Lord, turn again the captivity of Zion," his 
wife broke in, saying: "Eh! mon, you're aye 
drawn out for the Jews; but it's our bairn that's 
deein ! " Then clasping her hands, she cried : 
" Lord, help us, or give us back our darling, if 
it be thy holy will ; and if he is to be taken, oh ! 
take him to thyself." That woman knew how 
to pray, which was more than her husband did. 

We are to pray specifically ; we are to see and 
seize the special weaknesses and bad tendencies 
that assault us, and we are to pray about them. 
Somebody has injured you, for instance, and you 
are nursing your wrath to keep it warm, like 
Tarn O'Shanter's wife. Did you ever take that 
thing and pray over it? Did you take it before 
the Lord and ask him to tell you what you ought 



PAUI/'S "CAN." 197 

to do about that special thing ? If you have a 
tendency toward impatience, or toward pride, or 
melancholy, or anxiety, you are to pray about 
those things that assault you specially. This is 
the true way of self-examination — not looking 
into ourselves and tearing ourselves to pieces, 
and wondering why we don't feel this way or 
that way. It does not matter how you feel so 
you do right. But this is self-examination : 
Here I am with a tendency to impatience like 
Paul's. I am going to try to overcome that ; I 
am going to pray to the Lord to help me to 
overcome that. And it is out of prayer like that 
that a good life comes. 

Paul's "can" comes out of self-surrender. Do 
you not remember that journey to Damascus? 
Paul had been impressed with Stephen's grand 
character; had heard him say, when the people 
stoned him, "Lord, lay not this sin to their 
charge." I have no doubt that all the way to 
Damascus he was in contest with himself. Then 
came that flash of light, and he saw that he was 
wrong, and he said, "Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do?" All moral ability comes out of self- 



198 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

surrender. You cannot have Christ unless you 
give yourself to him. 

I remember distinctly one experience in my 
own life, when I had been very rebellious, and 
when I had said to myself, "I will not do what 
I know I ought to do." Then, I remember 
how, after I had been carrying on the struggle 
for a long time, I broke down, and I said: 
"Lord, I give it all up; I make a full surren- 
der; I will do what is right." Light and peace 
and power came to me then, and the things I 
said I could not do were the things I found I 
could do, and have done ever since. 

This "can" of PauFs comes out of a recog- 
nition of God's hand in our circumstances. I 
have been trying to describe to you the environ- 
ment in which the apostle was. See how cheer- 
fully and beautifully he writes in that environ- 
ment: "Not that I speak in respect of want, for 
I have learned in whatsoever state I am there- 
with to be content." He was not quarreling 
with his circumstances; he believed God put 
him there for a purpose, and he was doing for 
the Lord Jesus the best he could under these cir- 



PAULS "CAN. 199 

curnstances. There was that soldier to whom 
Paul was chained, and he had to come to church 
whether he wanted to or not; and pretty soon 
we begin to hear about saints in Caesar's house- 
hold. If Paul could not range the world over, 
he could write, and what a precious part of our 
New Testament comes from the apostle's letters ! 
He did the best he could in the circumstances in 
which he was placed, because he recognized 
God's hand. There is power in that. One 
year, I was on a little island up in the St. Law- 
rence, on which there was a great, grey boulder. 
There was just a little break in the stone, and 
in that break a little bit of mullein had, some- 
how or other, found itself planted. There was 
scarcely any soil, but it was doing the very best 
it could; it was putting out its thick, furry 
leaves, and pushing itself up into flower as 
valorously as it could. Always do the very 
best you can. 

This "can" of the apostle springs out of trust. 
It does not spring out of an easy-going life, a 
heedless life, a purposeless life; but it does spring 
out of a struggle for the right, self-surrender, 



200 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

recognition of God's hand in our circumstances, 
and trust in Jesus Christ. " I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me." And 
Christ is powerful. He is the one who died to 
give us life, who rose again, and is at the right 
hand of God, dispensing power by the Holy 
Spirit to help every one of us in the daily life. 
He is a living Christ, and precisely as he 
wrought in the apostle, so will he work in 
you. Really, it is quite possible for yon to 
rise into the jubilation and the victory of the 
apostle's "can." 

He leads us on 

By paths we did not know, 
Upward he leads us. Though our steps be slow, 
Though oft we faint and falter by the way, 
Though storms and darkness oft obscure the day, 

Yet when the clouds are gone, 

We know he leads us on. 

He leads us on 

Through all the unquiet years ; 
Past all our dreamland hopes, and doubts, and fears, 
He guides our steps. Through all the tangled maze 
Of sin, of sorrow, and o'erclouded days 

We know his will is done, 

And still he leads us on. 



PAULS "CAN." 201 

And he at last, 

After the weary strife, 
After the restless fever we call life, 
After the dreariness, the aching pain, 
The wayward struggles which have proved in vain* 

After our toils are past, 

Will give us rest at last 



XVI. 
WALKING WITH GOD. 

IT is wonderful what terms of fellowship God 
deigns to use, expressing the relation in 
which we stand to him. When I think of the 
greatness of God ; when I think how he made 
all the worlds, and how he is so great that all 
I can know of him is in the way of negation, as 
that he is not bounded, that there is no limit to 
his wisdom and powers, that he is infinite ; when 
I think of these, I can understand how I should 
be bidden to worship him, and to laud him, and 
to praise and to exalt him, and to prostrate my- 
self before him. It is all right. 

But God would have me come near to him. 
He desires to have me in a sweet intimacy, in 
the closest nearness. How wonderful that a man 
should be said to " walk with God " ! 

" Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for 

God took him." And the Scripture is full of 
202 



WALKING WITH GOD. 203 

hints and suggestions that I am to come into 
fellowship with God, and so to stand with him 
that I may walk with him. 

I am not always to think of him on his throne: 
but as of one who is my companion in daily life. 
How wonderful is the condescension of God ! 
Once, last summer, I just saw Mr. Gladstone as 
he was driving from his official residence. There 
was a great crowd gathered. One after another 
drove through, and then came the great man 
himself. I saw him somewhat nearly, and was 
impressed with the immense power that streamed 
forth from him ; I thought myself fortunate to 
be so near him ; but if he had singled me out 
from the crowd and had taken my arm, and had 
said, "Walk with me through the park/' and 
had talked with me about his great life and 
about my simpler life, I should have thought it 
an act of great condescension. I should have felt 
that a great opportunity was open to me. This is 
just what God does. Let us think what it means 
to walk with God, and what it will bring to us. 

One thing: is the sense that he is near us. If 
I walk with God, I am to see God in everything. 



204 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Father has great delight in treees. When I go 
home, I walk about the grounds and see the 
trees which he has grouped together. I see why 
he placed this tree and that tree in artistic 
fashion, and why he has graded the lawn, and it 
is a constant delight to me ; and it is an added 
delight to think that it is my father who has 
disposed all these trees. So we should think of 
the hand of the Father, and every flower should 
be to us a sacrament. Every beauty should 
have an added beauty, because God's hand is in 
it. Our religion will have glints of brightness 
all about us if we realize that God is in all, shin- 
ing through the beams of the sun, speaking 
through the rippling waters. " He is closer to us 
than breathing, nearer than hands and feet." 

To walk with God is to be certain of his care. 
There is a divine providence about us. I like 
these lines of Mrs. Browning : 

■' Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 

west, 
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around 

our incompleteness, 
Round our restlessness his rest." 



WALKING WITH GOD. 205 

To walk with God is constantly to recognize 
the fact of his tender personal care. It is to be 
conscious of his smile. Even if we be sinners, 
it is not needful that we be shut out from his 
smile; for Christ in our nature has met the doom 
of sin. My sin being put away, there is in me a 
new heart. I am " accepted in the Beloved." I 
have been adopted into his favor. There comes 
to me the divine presence in the sense of the 
divine indwelling. Even if I be a sinner, yet if 
I be a sinner trusting in Jesus, adopted and be- 
loved, then down within my heart falls the 
Father's smile. 

I suppose a person may be a Christian, and 
not have this consciousness. A man may be a 
Ohristian, and yet be so mean as to build on the 
one foundation only wood, hay, stubble; but 
this is not needful. If you do not have this 
divine presence within, be dissatisfied until you 
gain it. This possession inward is better than 
possession outward. 

To walk with God involves believing what he 
says. He said it ; it is true. He did it ; it is 
right. There is no cruelty in it. The other 



206 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

day, I went into a house where a great sorrow 
had fallen. A little child, the only one, lay 
dead, and yet God had done it ; and because he 
did there was no cruelty in it. It did almost 
seem to me, as I tried to comfort the broken- 
hearted mother, that it was cruel. The mother 
asked me : " Why should there be children in 
other homes, and none here ? " But it was not 
cruel. 

We could not think of it as cruel, if we believe 
God's word. Dear friends, if we had more of 
this faith, how much it would do for us ! 

To walk with God is to believe what he says. 
I cannot walk except I take him at his word. 
You cannot walk with God unless you know 
God's word. Read it, and you will be brought 
into union with him. 

If I walk with a friend, I talk with him. I 
take a walk in the park with my son, and he 
says : " See here, father ; see that hill ; see that 
rock ; see the ice ! What a place that would 
be for sliding ! See what a place yonder would 
be for bicycling ! " If I walk with God, I con- 
verse and commune with him about everything. 



WALKING WITH GOD. 207 

If you have trials or troubles, walk with God, 
and talk with him about them. 

I walk with God when I constantly ask : " Will 
this please God?" If I would walk with God, 
I may not bear in my feelings anything that 
God would not approve: pride, envy, grudging. 
Perhaps you have not a consciousness of the 
Lord's presence- Are you allowing in you some- 
thing that would displease God ? 

To walk with God does not take us out of life, 
and make monks and nuns of us. The Trappist 
monks must not speak to each other, must wear 
certain clothing, must grovel on the floor, and 
eat their food on the floor. This is not walking 
with God. Jesus "came eating and drinking/' 
and attending marriage feasts. I may do all 
these ; but if I walk with God, I shall do them 
all in the right spirit, and all will be for him. 

What are the effects of walking with God ? 
If I walk with God, I shall have God's help. 
That is the way we get his help. "For the 
eves of the Lord run to and fro throughout 
the whole earth, to show himself strong in the 



208 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward 
him." 

If I walk with God, I shall grow better. 
That is the true way of sanctification. There 
never lived a man who had got beyond the Lord's 
Prayer. I have heard persons say that they did 
not need to pray, " Forgive us our trespasses." 
This is one of the worst delusions. But if I 
walk with God, then how certainly and swiftly 
I grow better. I am held in contact with him ; 
I am changed into his likeness. 

Here is a poor little street arab. Suppose I 
go to him and say : "You must not yield to your 
surroundings. In the midst of impurity, you 
must be pure. In the midst of filth, you must 
be clean. In the midst of dishonesty, you must 
be honest." How idle it would all be ! But I 
take him out of his conditions, and, through the 
agency of one of the great noble societies, I send 
him to the far West, where he is surrounded by 
better influences. I put him in a comfortable 
home, and he sloughs off all that is bad in him. 

If I walk with God, I get myself into com- 
munion with God. I sav : " I walk with thee. 



WALKING WITH GOD. 209 

What displeases thee I put away." I am lifted 
into a new atmosphere, and so I become sancti- 
fied. And this is the true method of sanctifica- 
tion. 

If I walk with God, I shall have joy. I have 
already spoken of the difference between joy and 
happiness. Happiness is what hangs about us 
like a cloak, Joy springs up within us. Sup- 
pose the skies grow dark ; yet that is outward ; 
it cannot hurt me, if I am in God. 

If I walk with God how much more use and 
help I shall be to others. You want to be help- 
ful; the way is to walk with God. 

If I thus walk, will death be hard? It was 
not much for Enoch ; it will not be much for 
me. Death will not be terrible. Shall I fear 
death ? 

41 Fear Death ? To feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snow begins, and the blasts denote, 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe/ ' 

I have not dying grace now ; I do not want 

o 



210 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

it. I do not expect to die now. So far as I 
know, I am going to live. I expect to take rest 
to-night, to preach to-morrow, to labor through 
next week. Dying grace is not necessary ; but 
if I walk with God, dying grace will come. 

Dear friends, let us enter into this companion- 
ship with God. Let us walk with him. How 
strong you shall be ; how full of help to others ! 



XVII. 

CONQUERING CIRCUMSTANCES. 

rnHIS morning, a very dear friend, who yes- 
-*- terday passed her seventy-second birthday, 
handed me a little tract on "Help for our Daily 
Life." The little tract had been helpful to her, 
and she hoped that it might be so to me. The 
thought came to me that perhaps it would be a 
helpful thing for us to consider this afternoon, 
"How we can be the master of circumstances, 
and not the victim of them." 

Apparently, no man was ever more hindered 
and hampered than was the great apostle, the 
man who plowed more deeply into the lives of 
men than any other man except Moses; and, 
possibly, not even Moses was an exception. Our 
notion of Paul is largely wrong. He seems to 
us the incarnation of vigor, enterprise, strength. 
But this is a mistaken idea of him. So far as 
we can judge, he was insignificant in appear- 

211 



212 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

ance, below the usual stature, and afflicted with 
a physical complaint which I believe was oph- 
thalmia, a very distressing and pitiful infirmity. 
As he stood or sat (as was the custom of those 
days) before men to whom he was personally 
a stranger, he had to overcome the fact that the 
first impression which he had made on them was 
hindering. And he was very sensitive; his heart 
was not hard, cold, indifferent to the opinion of 
others; he felt very deeply what others thought 
of him. 

Then there was the hindering of his long 
imprisonment. It was strange that at a time 
when there was such need of preaching and of 
leadership, this disciple should have spent six 
years or more in prison. 

But let us recall how he met and managed 
his hindrances. See how he speaks in the first 
chapter of Philippians: "According to my ear- 
nest expectation and my hope that in nothing I 
shall be ashamed, but that, as always, so also 
now, Christ shall be magnified in my body 
whether by life or by death." Though he is so 
hindered and hampered, nothing is going to 



CONQUERING CIRCUMSTANCES. 213 

defeat him, prevent him from doing his utmost 
for the Lord Christ, and being triumphant in 
the doing. He is never the victim, but always 
the victor of circumstances. No one of us was 
ever hindered as he; yet no one of us but would 
say that we were under hindrances. 

It may be that you are hindered by failing 
strength ; it may be by poverty ; it may be by 
want of position and appreciation. We have 
all said : " Oh, if this, or that thing were only 
out of the wav!" We do not rise above our 
circumstances as Paul did. We are listless, 
instead of being active. 

Now, how can we rise above our circum- 
stances? This is a very important question. 
We have but one life. If we are not doing our 
duty now, and doing it nobly and grandly, we 
shall never do it. We shall never pass this 
way again. We shall never see the past week 
again. We shall never see this Saturday again. 
We shall see, perhaps, next Saturday; but that 
will be another, not this. If we are ever going 
to conquer our circumstances, we must do it now. 



214 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

How can I be the master of mv circumstances, 
and not the slave? 

1. We must never forget that God's hand is 
in all our circumstances; he has to do with the 
shaping of them. We never find Paul looking 
back, and wishing he were out of his circum- 
stances, and wonderiug how he ever did the 
thing which brought him into them. And yet 
in the events which brought him into his im- 
prisonment, he came, I think, as near to the 
edge of making a mistake in his efforts at con- 
ciliating opposition, as he ever did. He had 
yielded to the judgment and advice of the 
Judaizing Christians in reference to going into 
the temple with the three men who had a vow 
upon them. We have not all the circumstances 
of the case; but it seems to me that, if ever he 
made a mistake, it was then. Out of his action 
came the mob at Jerusalem ; out of that, his 
arrest, his imprisonment for a year or two, then 
his voyage to Rome, his shipwreck, and his con- 
finement at Rome for two years. All this sprung 
out of that seemingly doubtful expedient. But 
Paul never goes back along his life and says : " I 



CONQUERING CIRCUMSTANCES. 215 

made a mistake here and there." We say : " If 
I had not done so and so, I should not now be 
here." We talk as if God had nothing to do 
with it. No matter how sad a mistake you have 
made, yet in your circumstances to-day there is 
God's hand. God is not to be baffled because 
you have made a mistake. What is involved in 
our care for childhood but the overruling of the 
mistakes of our children toward their better 
education ? 

The thing for us to do is to remember that 
God's hand is in all, controlling all, overruling 
all. This is one of the surest things in the 
world; God will keep us in all our ways ; and 
he is able to overrule all our mistakes. We 
may, we must look back and say, " I have made 
a mistake ; I will not do the same thing again " ; 
but we are not to feel that because we have made 
a mistake, God is nowhere, and his hand is not 
in all our circumstances. 

2. We must remember that in our present cir- 
cumstances, difficult as they are, we can live a 
life that is pure and beautiful. Now, Paul 
might have said: "I am chained to a Roman 



216 SATUEDAY AFTEKNOON. 

soldier; I can do nothing but wait till I am 
released." But that would not have been living 
a noble life. Instead of that, he said : " Accord- 
ing to my earnest expectation and my hope, that 
in nothing I shall be ashamed." 

You may be a true Christian man or Christian 
woman in your circumstances. You remember 
the case of that little Hebrew maid, caught in a 
raid made by the Syrians, and carried as a slave 
to Syria, to the house of Naaman. She led a 
pious and beneficent life in her circumstances. 
You remember the experience of David as he 
was fleeing before Absalom, after he had gotten 
back to God. There are more psalms that 
belong to that terrible period of David's life than 
to any other. 

So of Paul in his imprisonment. He could 
not go among his brethren and speak to them j 
but he could write. And see how manv letters 
we owe to that first imprisonment; the letter to 
Philemon, that to the Colossians, to the Ephe- 
sians, to the Philippians. 

And he could preach, if not to a thousand, yet 
to one, to the Roman soldier who was chained to 



CONQUERING CIRCUMSTANCES. 217 

his wrist. And as the result, he writes of " the 
saints that were of Caesar's household." 

Do you remember the touching story that 
Jean Ingelow tells of the girl in one of the Ork- 
ney Islands, who saw her father's fishing boat 
lost, and saw her father's body washed ashore ; 
and ever after that she slept when others watched, 
and watched when others slept ; every day she 
spun her wonted tale of woolen yarn, and then 
one skein more ; and that extra skein went to buy 
a candle, which burned all night, in her little 
window ; and many a sailor and fisherman found 
safety because her humble candle flung its rays 
far out upon the ocean. She conquered her cir- 
cumstances. 

Let us not say, " I can do nothing ; " but 
rather let us say, " Let me do the little that I 
can." 

3. Not only must we realize that we can live 
a noble life in our circumstances ; but we must 
determine that we will. Here is our trouble. 
We long and yearn, but when it comes to the 
rugged doing, we do not do it. You all mean to 
live for the Lord Christ; but when it comes to 



218 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

doing it, we only long; we do not resolve, we do 
not choose. Now, I long to go to Palestine ; I 
would gladly have started last night, hard as the 
wind blew. But I do not choose to go. I do 
not determine to go. So we long ; we yearn ; we 
wish ; we desire ; but we do not choose ; we do 
not will. I wish we might be more full of 
choice, of will. 

How can I actually do this ? You must take 
hold of the thing next you, and do it. It may 
be that the thing next you is the duty of confess- 
ing Christ; then do it. It may be that it is the 
duty of setting right some wrong that you have 
done ; then, do it. Perhaps the thing next you 
is the duty of keeping a greater watch over your 
temper ; then, do it. The only way to do it is to 
do it. Paul did not brood over his imprison- 
ment ; he preached to that one hearer, and to the 
hearer of the next day. 

We are not told to do all in a lump, but one 
thing at a time ; one door will lead to another, 
and that to another, and so on until, before we 
know it, we are free. 

4. Not onlv is God in our circumstances : he is 

1 ' 



CONQUERING CIRCUMSTANCES. 219 

controlling them to our best good. Fifty years 
ago in Africa, there was a boy who seemed of no 
value ; he was a slave ; once he was sold for a 
horse ; but the man who had bought him, 
brought him back, and would not keep him ; 
then he was sold for so many bottles of rum, 
with the same result; then for so much tobacco, 
and the same result followed. Then, at last he 
was sold to some Portuguese slave traders, and 
they put him, chained, in the hold of a slave 
ship ; the ship was taken by a British cruiser, 
and he was released. He is now Bishop Crow- 
ther. I am sure that he thanks God for all his 
circumstances. God was controlling all. 

It was just so with Paul. God so controlled 
his circumstances that the things which happened 
turned out to be a furtherance of the gospel. 

We can live a pure and beautiful life. One 
of the sweetest saints I know is serving God in 
the imprisonment of her sick room. From the 
pulpit of her bed and her padded chair, she is 
preaching the grace and beauty of Christian 
patience and submission as I have rarely known 
it preached. 



220 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Dear friends, we make too much of our cir- 
cumstances. We make our circumstances too 
much an excuse. We can live a true life in any 
circumstances, if we remember that God is in our 
circumstances, that he controls our circumstances ; 
and if, in the strength of God, we begin to take 
hold of the duty next to us. 



XVIII. 
MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND. 

11HAT is a very sweet note of trust which 
David strikes in the thirty-first Psalm : 
" My times are in thy hand." It is a great 
thing to have our times in the grasp of one more 
wise, more kind, more loving than ourselves. 
The Philistines had threatened a portion of the 
land ; David had conquered them at Keilah, and 
delivered the people of the city out of their 
hands. And Saul having heard of David's 
whereabouts called the people together to besiege 
David ; for he thought he could now surely 
capture him. But David heard of SauPs inten- 
tions, and of the purpose of the people of the 
place to deliver him up to Saul ; so " David and 
his men arose and departed out of Keilah and 
went whithersoever they could go": he retired to 
a mountain, and hid himself. There Saul fol- 
lowed him ; and David fled to another place, 

221 



222 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

entrenching himself in the wilderness of Maon. 
Still Saul pursues him ; and he and his men 
surrounded the mountain in the heights of which 
David hides and whence he finds no possible 
egress. There, as was David's wont in any 
difficulty, he turns his heart Godward ; and 
when it seems as if SauPs grip was sure, David 
is saved in a most remarkable manner. There 
comes word to Saul that the Philistines have 
broken out again; and so his attention is 
diverted from David ; and David, without strik- 
ing a single blow, is delivered from his bitter 
enemy. Under these circumstances this Psalm 
is supposed to have been written. We shall be 
happy just in proportion as we realize that our 
times do not depend upon ourselves, but are in 
the control of One loving, wise, and infinite. 

The great argument for the truth that " my 
times are in God's hand" is the Lord Jesus 
Christ himself. I do not think this life would 
be worth living were it not for him ; but when 
I really look at him, who is "the express image" 
of the Godhead ; when I find him delicately 
sensitive to every human want; when I find that 



MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND. 223 

he comprehends every least and even unspoken 
prayer ; when I look at him, — all my skepticism 
passes away. It is a wonderfully helpful thing 
to think of him as he was upon the earth — of 
the poor woman who could only timidly lay her 
finger on the edge of his mantle; and yet in all 
the throng her touch was noticed bv him. And 
then the prayer of the mothers, whom the rude, 
gruff disciples would have driven away, and the 
rebuke the Lord gave those disciples, in the 
graphic words we find in Mark, " Suffer the 
little children to come unto me, and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of God. And 
he took them up in his arms, put his hands on 
them, and blessed them." 

The Lord never turned away from any trouble; 
and he is not changed. He has changed his 
realm, but his heart is forevermore the same — 
"the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
And if the Lord was so strung with sensitiveness 
on the earth, he is surely not less so now, and he 
must notice me and regard me. 

But if our times are in God's hands, what 
then ? Well, there are a good many " what 



224 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

thens." We should be relieved of a great deal 
of anxiety. What is anxiety ? It is that which 
gives pain, and no pain is quite so piercing as 
this steady pain of anxiety, this looking into the 
future, and wondering if we can meet this, that, 
and the other thing — this trouble about your 
children, wishing you could see in them this 
thing or that, which you do not see, and wonder- 
ing what will come to them if such things do not 
apppear in their character. It is a great deal 
easier for us to be anxious than to be full of 
faith ; yet we need not be consumingly anxious. 
"Take no thought for the morrow" means that. 
It does not mean that we should not be thrifty; 
but it does mean that we should not be cut all to 
pieces with anxiety. I have read a story of 
John Wesley, that he was walking along with a 
man who was very much troubled, and who was 
telling him all about his troubles; and that just 
then they passed a meadow where a cow was 
looking over a stone fence, and Mr. Wesley 
said : " Do you know why that cow looks over 
the wall?" "Why, no," was the answer. 
" Well, that cow looks over the wall, because she 



MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND. 225 

cannot look through it." And so, if I forget 
that my times are in God's hands, I am very apt 
to try to look through the wall. Dean Alford 

says: 

" My bark is wafted on the strand 
By breath divine ; 
And on the helm there rests a hand 
Other than mine. 

" One who was known in storms to sail 
I have on board ; 
Above the roaring of the gale 
I have my Lord." 

Another thing you can have, if you only grip 
unerringly this truth, "My times are in thy 
hand," that is a great rest and peace in work. If 
I am only sure the work I am doing is the work 
put upon me by God, even if it may be moun- 
tainous and irksome, yet it gets a new glory, and 
a new shining, because it is from him. It is 
certain that if I do mv work as toward the 
Lord, he will weave it into his great purposes. 

It is reported of the Emperor Justinian that 
he said : " I will build a temple to the great 
God, and the glory thereof shall be mine ; and 



226 SATUKDAY AFTERNOON. 

when I reach the gates of heaven, the angels will 
come forth and say, c Enter, great Justinian, who 
built a temple to the great God/ " But when the 
temple was completed and the inscription carved 
over its portal, as the emperor had commanded 
— "For the great God, by the great Emperor 
Justinian " — a strange thing happened. On the 
day it was to be dedicated, it was discovered 
that another inscription took the place of the 
one he had ordered. It was this: "This house 
is built for the great God, by the Widow Eu- 
phrasia." And when the emperor saw it, he 
angrily called together all the workers, and 
inquired what it meant ; and the chief priests 
said to the emperor, " This is not of man, but 
of God." At last, at the emperor's command, 
the Widow Euphrasia was found — old and thin 
and wrinkled and sick — and the emperor asked 
her what she had done. But she knew nothing 
about it. She had been lying on a bed of straw 
in an alley; and as the oxen, drawing the 
stone to the temple passed by the place where 
she lay, she noticed that the sharp stones hurt 
their hoofs; and she asked that the workmen 



MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND. 227 

would take the straw from her bed and strew it 
where the oxen were passing. 

Of course, this story is a fable ; but, never- 
theless, there is a great truth in it. If I can only 
be sure that God appoints my duty, even if it be 
a duty as slight as that, even if it be no more 
than the cup of cold water in the name of a dis- 
ciple, then it is accepted as unto him. " Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto rne." 
The Lord recognized it, and it goes into the great 
sum and consummation of his purposes. And 
so I can get content in the duty he sets against 
my hand. When things all seem to be at sixes and 
sevens, and when you long for some larger sphere^ 
try to remember, " My times are in thy hand," 
and say, " I will do this duty as for God " ; and 
I think you will then find that there is a strange 
worship in it. So, if I do what God appoints, I 
can get inward rest and peace. 

Did you ever notice how, from the vestibule 
of that sweet truth, "The Lord is my shepherd," 
the Psalmist passes into a kind of temple of 
sweet enjoyment. Why, then, he leads me be- 



228 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

side the still waters, and I will drink. He makes 
me to lie down in green pastures, and I shall get 
the rest. If I wander a little, he will bring me 
back. He guides me : I will not fear. Even 
if I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, why then I will not fear. Because the 
Psalmist could strike that first note, he could 
strike all the others. That was a true sentence 
I met the other day : " Always the gates of 
heaven open from within. It is what we are 
within ourselves that makes what we are outside 
of ourselves." Paul and Silas in prison knew 
wonderful joy, though their feet were in the 
stocks. And if you and I can accept the truth 
that God is concerned about us, we can have rest, 
even though we should be led as strangely as 
were Paul and Silas. 

I should be willing to have you forget all I 
have said this afternoon, if you will only remem- 
ber this : " My times are in thy hand." If you 
do that, you will not be so anxious, and you will 
be able to have ever so much joy in each daily 
duty, and you will be able to enter into the mean- 
ing of the Scripture. 



MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND. 229 

Wait a little while ; 

Be sure 
Thou' st but one short lifetime 

To endure. 

Wait a little while, 

And trust ; 
Thou shalt suffer only 

What thou must. 

Wait a little while ; 

Above 
Is the God who gives you pain 

In his love. 

Wait a little while ; 

His grace 
Soon shall bear you quickjv 

To his face. 



XIX. 

WHAT WE ARE AND HAVE. 

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 
Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son ; and 
if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. — Galatians 
4 : 6, 7. 

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again 
to fear ; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, 
whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bear- 
eth witnesss with our spirit, that we are the children of 
God : And n children, then heirs ; heirs of God, and 
joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with 
him, that we may be also glorified together. — Romans 
8 : 15-17. 

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the 
best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his 
hand, and shoes on his feet. — Luke 15 : 22. 

WE have not received the spirit of bondage ; we 
have received the Spirit of adoption. We are 
made sons. We call God " Father." The Spirit 
puts the ring of dignity and adoption on our 
finger. We are again his sons. 
230 



WHAT WE ARE AND HAVE. 231 

1. Filialness takes the place of fear. We once 
had the spirit of bondage. If we are not right 
with God, we are in terror. A holy God cannot 
look on us with benignity ; and hence comes 
dread. But now comes the Spirit of adoption. 
We know that we are sons. We stand in a new 
relation. 

All is wrapped up in that word "Father." 
Have you wondered why Paul used the Syriac 
word "Abba " ? When we come to tell our very 
heart out, we always use the tongue that we 
spoke at our mother's knee. Nothing but the 
old nursery word would express his feelings. 
And so he says "Abba," and then he translates 
k into the Greek word for father. 

In a most free and peculiar sense, we are sons. 
We have received the Spirit of adoption. There 
will henceforth be the fear of filialness, but no 
longer of dread. This filialness will give rise to 
the closest intercourse. We are brought into 
sonship so that we dare to say, "Abba," " dear 
Father." That is the position in which we stand 
to God. We shall not merely call on God for 
great things, but for the small as well. 



232 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

There is prayer; and there is communion. If 
we stand in this relation to God, we shall talk to 
him about everything, and shall want to do his 
will in everything. It is "Abba, dear Father." 
Therefore w r e shall pray to him, talk to him, 
consult him. 

2. Out of filialness springs assurance. The 
Spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we 
are sons of God. The Scripture is full of this 
assurance, this certainty. It is not presumption: 
we may know. Thus, in 2 Corinthians 1 : 22, 
" God hath given the earnest of the Spirit in our 
hearts." So, too, in 2 Corinthians 5:5: God 
"also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit." 
So in Ephesians 1 : 13, 14: " That holy Spirit of 
promise which is the earnest of our inheritance 
until the redemption of the purchased possession." 

There is such a thing as an internal evidence. 
It is not indeed of the same value as the exter- 
nal. There is depression among Christians, be- 
cause we have been taught to expect too much 
inward light. The great reason for assurance is 
that God has said, through Christ : " Him that 
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." But 



WHAT WE ARE AND HAVE. 233 

there is an internal evidence. The Spirit wit- 
nesseth with our spirit that we are the sons of 
God. There are many Christians who do not 
get the good they might out of their religion. 
It is possible to have an internal consciousness. 
Let us determine to have it. It comes by con- 
secrating ourselves to God. It is sin that comes 
in and puts a mist between our souls and God, 
so that we do not see him. 

We say : " The sun has set," and we sorrow sore 
As we watch the darkness creep the landscape o'er, 
And the thick shadows fall, and the night draws on, 
And we mourn for the brightness lost, and the vanished 
sun : 

And all the time the sun in the self-same place 
Waits, ready to clasp the earth in his embrace, 
Ready to give to all of his stintless ray, 
And 'tis we who have "set," it is we who have turned 
away ! 

41 The Lord has hidden his face," we sadly cry, 
As we sit in the night of grief with no helper by. 
"Guiding uncounted worlds in their courses dim, 
How should our little pain be marked by him ? " 

But all the while that we mourn, the Lord stands near, 
And the Son Divine is waiting to help and hear ; 



234 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

And 'tis we who hide our faces, and blindly turn away, 
While the Sun of the soul shines on 'mid the perfect 
day. 

There is ever so much more in our Christian- 
ity than we have got hold of. This witness of 
the Spirit is a precious thing. We get a gleam 
of it; but it may be the steady state of the 
soul. 

3. There follows heirship. We have a title ; 
not in ourselves, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Since it is in hini, it is a sure title, and nothing 
can prevent us from entering into our inheritance. 
We are heirs. 

4. Though we have received this Spirit of 
adoption, and so come into this relation of filial- 
ness, it does not follow that we shall miss chas- 
tisement. We must receive this. This is im- 
plied in the words of Paul, which follow the 
words just quoted : " If we suffer with him, we 
shall also be glorified together." When we have 
become sons, we are not out of the sphere of 
chastisement. Since we are heirs to such an un- 
imagined glory, there is needed much discipline 
and culture to fit us for it. Being sons of God, 



WHAT WE ARE AND HAVE. 235 

there is so much for us that there must be sculp- 
ture and trial to prepare us for what is to come. 

But chastisement is never the sign of God's 
displeasure, though punishment is. Chastisement 
is ever the expression of God's love. 

I have gone into the house of a Christian where 
there had come a great sorrow ; perhaps a child 
had fallen from the crib into the coffin. And 
the mother would say : " What sin have I com- 
mitted that God should punish me so ? " God 
has not punished her. at all. He has chastened 
her, in order that thus she may become fitted for 
the magnificence of the inheritance. 

In Hebrews, chapter 12, we read : " What son 
is he whom the father chasteneth not ? " It is 
that the father may get the son ready for what 
the father intends for him. If we can think of 
this, it will take the pain out of the chastisement. 
Let us transmute our trouble into trial. 

I cannot say, 
Beneath the pressure of life's cares to-day, 

I joy in these ; 

But I can say 
That I had rather walk this rugged way. 

If him it please. 



236 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

I cannot feel 
That all is well when darkening clouds conceal 

The shining sun ; 

But then I know 
God lives and loves, and say, since it is so, 

"Thy will be done. " 

I cannot speak 
In happy tones ; the teardrops on my cheeks 

Show I am sad ; 

But I can speak 
Of grace to suffer with submission meek, 

Until made glad. 

I do not see 
Why God should e'er permit some things to be, 

When he is love ; 

But I can see, 
Though often dimly, through the mystery, 

His hand above. 

I may not try 
To keep the hot tears back ; but hush that sigh, 

44 It might have been " ; 

And try to still 
Each rising murmur, and to God's sweet will 

Respond — Amen. 

Realizing that chastisement does not mean 
wrath to us, we can sinir. as we often do : 



WHAT WE ARE AXD HAVE. 237 

Nearer, my God, to thee, 

Nearer to thee ; 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me, 
Still all my song shall be, 

Nearer, my God, to thee, 

Nearer to thee. 

Let us ever glory in our sonship. 



XX. 

THE CUP OF SALVATION. 

*t 1 WILL take the cup of salvation, and call 
JL upon the name of the Lord." 

You best serve the Lord by receiving all he 
gives you, not by hard penance. If my boy 
should come to me and say, lt Papa, how can I 
serve you ? " I should say, " Be as good a boy 
as you can ; learn your lessons as thoroughly as 
you can ; get the most out of what I can give 
you ; enjoy it the most you can." 

This is precisely what God says to us. He 
says, "I have given you benefits; repay me by 
taking the cup of my salvation ; by becoming the 
utmost Christian you can ; by using as perfectly 
as you can the benefits offered by Jesus Christ." 
I am sure this is the true way in which we shall 
serve God. 

Just think a moment what this cup of salva- 
tion involves. The Psalmist did not begin to 
238 



THE CUP OF SALVATION. 239 

know as much of God as we know. You will 
remember that the Psalmist's Bible was but a 
meagre one at the best : only the Pentateuch, and 
a few of the historical books. He knew nothing 
about the Atonement except as faintly hinted to 
him there. Surely, the cup of salvation meant 
to him far less than it might mean to you or me, 
since there is given to us an added revelation 
through Christ and through the Holy Spirit. 
And we serve the Lord the most when we get 
the most out of our religion that we can. 

This cup of salvation involves the real union 
between the Lord Jesus Christ and every one 
who trusts him. This is the fundamental truth 
of Christianity. When we give ourselves to 
Jesus Christ, we become one with him, in a way 
different from God's usual presence and provi- 
dence ; in a way deeper than by his sympathy 
with us, or by his association with us ; it is a 
union formed by the Holy Spirit. Not that the 
soul in any wise loses its personality ; but because 
it keeps its personality by its union with Jesus 
Christ, it is so interpenetrated and energized by 
the Spirit of Christ as to be made one with him, 



240 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

as to be made a member of that believing, justi- 
fied humanity, of which Christ is the Head. So 
we become one with him in an organic, real sense, 
which we cannot explain. This union is con- 
stantly insisted upon in the Scriptures, and is 
illustrated to us by many figures ; as, for instance, 
by the foundation stone of the building : or by 
the figure of husband and wife. They are one 
— the believer and the Lord — as wife and hus- 
band are one. Also by the figure of the branch 
and the vine. Just as there must be the closest 
union, a union profoundly beyond our compre- 
hension, so real and so intimate is the union 
between the Lord and those who trust him. 

The Lord dwells in believers. He is God 
within us. He deigns to make our hearts his 
habitation. The old Shekinah which shone in 
the Tabernacle and the Temple could only be 
seen when the curtain was parted for a moment 
as the high priest went in once a year to the 
Most Holy Place. But that Shekinah which is 
an illustration of the divine presence is now in 
the hearts of all Christians. Jesus dwells in us; 
mighty truth and marvelous ! Yet there is no 



THE CUP OF SALVATION. 243 

truth in the Scripture revealed more clearly. 

You are in vital union with our Lord Jesus 

Christ ; so is every one that trusts in him. No 

figure of which you can conceive can fully set 

forth the intimacy of this union. It is a most 

vital indwelling of the Lord with you ; you are 

so interpenetrated and energized by him, that you 

are really one with him, a member of that 

regenerated humanity of which he is the Head. 

The cup of salvation, in the Christian sense, 

involves the fact of this deep and lasting union 

between the soul and the soul's Redeemer. 

Now, since this is the great element in the cup 

of salvation, that I am one with Jesus Christ, 

then I am perfectly safe; no real disaster can 

come to me. No man is drowned, though his 

feet be under water, while his head is above. 

And if you are one with the Lord Jesus Christ, 

your head is above all the billows, and you will 

not, you cannot be overcome. The old hymn is 

true — 

Since he in heaven has fixed his throne, 
He'll fix his members there. " 

Well, then, this intimate union of the believer 

o 



242 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

with the Lord results to the believer in a restful- 
ness in this knowledge. 

A Southern gentleman said, that when he 
was a boy in Virginia at school, he was much 
indebted to a man who was a true teacher ; who 
gloried in his duty, as all true teachers do. Dr. 
Arnold said : " Do not take your work as a 
dose, and you will not find it nauseous." There 
came to the school a poor, little, dull, brown 
specimen of the " white trash " in the days of 
slavery. With almost infinite difficulty, the 
teacher taught her her lessons, until at last she 
had learned letter by letter, and then formed syl- 
lable by syllable, and, finally, she could read. 
One day later, her brother came to the school, 
barefooted, his clothes held up by a single sus- 
pender. When the little fellow came in, the 
teacher, with his longing to do good, called him 
to him, and, opening Webster's spelling book, 
said: "What's that?" He answered, "A." 
" Well done ! " and the teacher pointed to the 
next ; " B." And the teacher still pointed on. 
When he came to D, the little fellow's head 
dropped, and he waited, and then he flung his 



THE CUP OF SALVATION. 243 

head up again, full of a certain pride, and said : 
" I don't know that letter, but my sister Lizzie 
does ; it is all in the family/' Well, I am a very 
ignorant member of Christ's family. It is very 
little that I know, and it is very little that most 
of us know ; but the knowledge is in the family ; 
the Elder Brother knows. He knows, with 
whom we are indissolubly united. 

This fact that we are one with Jesus Christ 
involves the certainty of chastisement. I am a 
member of the body. My hand is a member of 
my body. Then, be sure I shall take care of my 
hand, because it is precious to me ; and I shall do 
nothing to my hand that will injure it. All my 
interest is to cause the hand to suffer only so 
much, that out of the suffering the best good can 
come. 

Well, I am some part of the regenerated body, — 
that is, of the Lord's body, — for I belong to him, 
and I am absolutely certain that whatever may 
come to me will be according to his knowledge 
and according to his love. Now, then, the fact 
that I am one with the Lord Jesus ought to be a 
reason for great joy. What an honor it is ! 



244 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

What a safety it is ! Why should I be like a 
bulrush, smitten with the wind? Why should I 
not have a sense of the dignity of what I am, a 
Christian, in indissoluble union with the Lord 
Christ. 

To take the cup of his salvation is just to get 
the good out of his benefits ; to take them, and to 
recognize what it means to be taking what God 
loves to give. I have not to take up any pen- 
ances, only to accept God's generosity. And the 
better I drink of it, the better I serve him. 

There is just one other thing : " I will pay my 
vows unto the Lord, now in the presence of all 
his people ;" for I am not ashamed that I 
belong to him, and am willing to have it known 
that I am one of his. If you take the cup of 
salvation, it will be easy to serve, because your 
heart will be full of joy. The best return you 
can possibly make to the Lord is to enjoy every- 
thing to the utmost, and to be the best Christian 
possible. 

I remember the red-letter days in my boyhood, 
when I was at home in Cleveland. Father was 
a young lawyer and was immensely busy, and 



THE CUP OF SALVATION. 245 

could only take a little time now and then with 
his family. One of the excursions we used to 
take was delightful, and the memory of it is a 
perpetual pleasure. They used to bring around 
the rockaway, and we stowed in all sorts of bag- 
gage, and all sorts of things to eat ; and through 
the long forests (not then cut down) we used to 
drive for days to a place miles and miles away, 
where some relations lived. And I remember 
how pleased father was when he saw the 
children enjoying everything, when they got 
out and walked for the sake of walking ; and 
when they enjoyed the birds, and when they 
liked the sandwiches which were so delicious, he 
would say, a smile meanwhile lighting up his 
countenance, " Why, I am happy just to see you 
enjoy it all." 

The Lord feels just that way. The more we 
enjoy, and the more we take of what he wants to 
give us, the more our brightness flashes back 
brightness even upon his face. 

Let these two principles be ever before you : 
First, drink all you can, and second, let it be 
known that you are the Lord's. 



246 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

44 Casting all your care upon him, 
For he careth " — words how sweet I 

How the Infinite and finite 
In this sacred sentence meet ! 

How each word, alone, the spirit 
Cheers and comforts ; how the whole, 

Like a loving benediction, 

Soothes the sorrow of the soul I 

Casting — like some long-borne burden, 
From the shoulders thrown at last, 

We, the care, grown, oh ! so heavy, 
On our Lord may wholly cast, 

Casting all — oh, gracious fullness, 
Slight as well as gravest care ; 

None too small for him to notice, 
None too great for him to bear. 

Casting all your care — ah, tender, 
Thoughtful " your " then it must be 

That his care for us is special, 
Personal for you and me. 

Casting all your care upon him ; 

Doubts and dreads and anxious fears, 
All that weighs the heart with sadness, 

All that dims the eyes with tears. 

Casting all your care upon him, 
For he careth, he doth heed ; 

Every want and woe foreseeth, 
Will not fail us in our need. 



THE CUP OF SALVATION. 247 

Careth for us — oh, how precious 

Is the care of earthly friend ! 
But the watch-care of a mother 

Doth our Father's care transcend. 

Careth for us — oh, then, brother, 

Let us care so wondrous prove ; 
From our hearts let us, believing, 

All anxiety remove I 

Cast it on the Lord and leave it, 

Trust his word so sweet and blest, 
And our hearts, before so burdened, 

Shall in peace surpassing rest. 



XXI. 
HOLDEN EYES. 

I SUPPOSE it is altogether impossible for us to 
know at all what must have been the surprise 
of the resurrection to the disciples. I remember 
to have read some time since of one whose dearest 
friend was in the war ; in the list of the killed 
and wounded, his name was once found ; he was 
given up entirely for lost. One day, ever so 
many months after, there was a wonted step 
upon the porch and a wonted knock against the 
door ; and one to whom he had been very dear 
went out to find him alive whom she supposed 
dead — wounded, indeed, and with an empty 
sleeve, but still alive. I suppose some such 
incident as that is necessary, in order to make 
real to us what must have been the absolute 
surprise of the resurrection to the disciples. Yet 
these disciples going to Emmaus had not yet 
entered into this joyful surprise. Our Lord 
248 



HOLDEN EYES. 249 

had risen, but they did not know it; their hope 
was utterly dead. It was the constant and 
steady feeling of the disciples before the cruci- 
fixion that our Lord could never die. They had 
seen how he had called Lazarus forth out of the 
grave after he had been four days a prisoner; 
they had seen how he had raised the daughter 
of Jairus ; they had seen the only son of the 
widow of Nain start forth into life ; thev had 
seen all sorts of wonderful things dropping from 
the benignant hand of the Lord Jesus Christ; 
and when he prophesied of the necessity of his 
death, they thought his meaning was that he 
might be apprehended and come into severe 
clashing with the authorities, but that yet in the 
crisis he would deliver himself, and that death 
never would smite him. When they at last saw 
that death was certain, when they saw his heart's 
blood spilled out on the green, rich earth at the 
foot of the cross, their hopes died too. And 
when he was carried to the tomb, dead as any 
one ever was — in that tomb their hopes were 
buried. 

These two disciples, after the tragedy, are 



250 Saturday after;noo:n. 

going to Emmaus, which was a little village 
about eight or nine miles away from Jerusalem. 
Their attachment to Jesus was now broken, the 
tragedy was ended, and there was nothing for 
them; they might cherish him as a memory, but 
he could never be any more than a dead friend ; 
and so, very probably, they were going back to 
their old home, to their usual occupation. While 
they were going, Jesus himself draws near, and 
begins to converse with them; but their eyes 
were holden. 

That was their trouble, holden eyes. I am 
sure it is a trouble still; it is quite a chronic 
trouble with most of us. If our eyes were not 
holden, we should be much braver, and more 
triumphant than we are. How much grace may 
we have? We have just as much grace as we 
will receive ; there is not a limit to God's giving, 
but there is in our receiving. God's grace is like 
the light pressing around this building; we may 
have as much as we will have; we may open the 
windows and clean off the blurs, or we may 
draw the shades down, and so onlv have a sub- 
dued light. So God's grace is pressing around 



HOLDEN EYES. 251 

every one, and we have as much of its holy 
peace and joy as we will to have. There is no 
reason in God why we should not be constantly 
and steadily on the mountain ; there is no reason 
in God why we should not have the peace of 
God which passeth understanding in our hearts. 
We have occasional glimpses ; but it ought to be 
constant ; it is not for some particular time, it is 
not simply for the time when we are worshiping, 
but for the time when we are working, for all 
time. We may have just as much of God's 
grace as we will have, and the reason we do not 
have more is because we do not care to have it. 
There are some things we are not willing to give 
up; we are not quite willing for Christ to take 
up entire and cleansing residence within us; we 
do not clean away the blurred spots of wrong 
thinking and wrong doing, and so enable our 
souls clearly to receive the Light, and so our eyes 
are holden, and we do not see the great and pre- 
cious grace that God has given us. Some of the 
reasons for holden eyes stand out in this narra- 
tive. As I have thought of them, they seem to 
be practical reasons to every one of us. 



252 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

1. Because we do not know enough of the 
Scripture ; we do not study it enough. That was 
one reason why the eyes of the disciples going to 
Emmaus were holden. They had a part of 
the Scriptures ; they had the Old Testament 
prophecies, and in them it was constantly fore- 
told that the Lord was to come and die and rise 
again ; either they had not studied the prophe- 
cies sufficiently, or they failed to comprehend 
their teaching. I am sure that it is a constant 
trouble with us. It would be quite surprising 
if those of us who study the Bible should ask 
ourselves how much we really study it ; the 
amount of time as compared with the amount of 
time given to pleasure, to intercourse, to society, 
to the newspaper, we should find it to be sur- 
prisingly small. It would be well for us to read 
the Bible through ; that would not be such a 
tremendous and terrible amount of reading to 
undertake. It would be well for us to read the 
gospels through, asking ourselves certain ques- 
tions : What do the gospels tell me concerning 
this, or this, or this? I know a very true and 
sweet and strong saint of God, who reads her 



HOLDEN EYES. 253 

Bible in this fashion. She wants to know what 
the Scripture says about faith, and she will read 
the New Testament through, marking the pas- 
sages that touch on this subject. After this is 
done, you may collate them and study them. 
You can find it all done in books, but it is a 
great deal better to do it for yourself. What a 
help if we should study with this thought in 
mind, to find out what in them our Lord Jesus 
Christ tells us that he will be to every one of us. 
Did you ever read the gospels with that idea, 
and then find yourself surprised, and your 
eyes opened, and your heart flooded with joy 
when he. tells you what he is? — how he is bread, 
water, shepherd, door; how he is vine to you, 
how he is rock to you, how he is light to you, 
how he is leader to you ? Do you suppose, if 
you read the Scripture in that fashion and were 
on the hunt for knowing what the Lord had told 
you he would be to you, your eyes would be as 
holden ? 

Some one came to me in great distress; she 
had great trouble ; her light was gone ; she had 
come into the darkness, and she was looking 



254 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

within herself and sighing and wondering, Why 
am I thus and thus ? I said, " I wish you would 
do what I want you to. Take the New Testa- 
ment and read the gospels with the question in 
your mind, What does Christ tell me he is to me? 
When you have read them through and marked 
them, look them over and over and fasten them 
in your thought. I saw her a few weeks after- 
ward, and the old light of peace was on her 
face. 

Read the epistles, in order to understand the 
theological relation of the facts of Jesus Christ to 
ourselves. We can understand in the epistles 
the method of the atonement ; we can understand 
why it was necessary that Christ should suffer, 
and what comes to us because of his atonement. 
As, for instance, the great peace that is written 
of in the eighth chapter of Romans : " There is 
therefore now no condemnation." And then we 
find in the same chapter of Romans how there is 
adoption for us ; how we are not simply forgiven, 
but are put into the place of sons, and stand 
in that relation to God, so that we, even though 
our lips are sin-stained, may cry, " Abba, Father!" 



HOLDEX EYES. 255 

By a determined looking into the Scripture in 
this way you will find wonderful help. 

2. Another reason suggested by this narrative, 
why our eyes are sometimes holden, is because we 
are in great sorrow. That was the trouble with 
these disciples ; the utmost sorrow had come to 
them. They had been in passionate devotion to 
their Lord ; all their hopes were centred in him, 
and now he was slain and buried, and that they no 
doubt thought was the end of it. I do not think 
it very wonderful that their eyes should be holden 
with sorrow, because they did not know of the 
resurrection. It is wonderful that sorrow should 
make your eye and mine holden, when we know 
that our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, 
and that all power in heaven and earth is in his 
hands. 

There is a story that, at the southern extremity 
of Africa, there thrusts itself out a cape, and it 
was supposed for many a century that men could 
not sail around it. Those who had rounded it 
were always lost in the waters swirling around it. 
The name of the cape was the Cape of Storms. 
A certain Portuguese determined to vanquish the 



256 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Cape, and he sailed resolutely around it, and so 
he paved the way for his countrymen to the far 
Cathay, and made a passage to the East Indies, 
and instead of naming it the " Cape of Storms," it 
was henceforth called the " Cape of Good Hope." 
Now into your life and mine has been thrust 
that Cape of Storms which we call death ; we do 
not know anything about it, and the question is, 
" Is there any light ? " Men have tried to answer 
that question, and could not. But our Lord 
Jesus Christ has rounded that cape, and he tells 
us that there is light and life on the other side. 
He has brought life and immortality to light, 
and to the Christian the Cape of Storms is 
changed into the Cape of Good Hope. It was 
not so wonderful that sorrow blinded the eyes of 
these disciples toward him ; but since we know 
that we have a living, helping, and guiding 
Saviour, it is wonderful that sorrow should so 
often blind our eyes to Jesus Christ. 

There is only one way of treating sorrow ; and 
that way is to make a fence by which we shall 
not be shut away from Christ, but shall be shut 
up to Christ. We ought to treat it just as Paul 



HOLDEK EYES. 257 

and Silas treated that prison in Philippi. They 
were thrust into the inner prison, and the iron 
doors grated against them ; but when that iron 
door closed, shutting them in, it did not shut 
them away from Christ, but it shut Christ in 
with them ; and thus in that darkness their eyes 
were not holden ; for they saw Christ, and in the 
midnight there were songs in their hearts and 
praises on their lips. There is great danger that 
when a trouble comes we allow it to get between 
us and the Lord ; what we want to do is to so 
use it that it shall force us closer to the Lord, 
and thus we shall see the Lord amid the sorrow. 
That is the Christian way of treating sorrow; 
there is no other proper way. 

When a great trouble or a less trouble comes, 
and you find yourself wondering, " Why should 
a thing like this happen tome?" do not let your 
faith fail in the Lord Jesus Christ. It shall be 
with you as it was with one who sings about it : 

Speechless Sorrow sat with me ; 
I was sighing wearily ; 
Lamp and fire were out ; the rain 
Wildly beat the window pane. 
R 



258 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

In the dark we heard a knock ; 
And the hand was on the lock. 
One in waiting spake to me, 

Saying sweetly, 
44 1 am come to sup with thee ! " 

All my room was dark and damp ; 
44 Sorrow ! " said I, 44 trim the lamp, 
Light the fire, and cheer thy face ; 
Set the guest chair in its place." 
And again I heard the knock ; 
In the dark I found the lock. 
44 Enter ! I have turned the key I 

Enter, stranger ! 
Who art come to sup with me." 

Opening wide the door, he came ; 
But I could not speak his name ; 
In the guest chair took his place ; 
But I could not see his face ! 
When my cheerful fire was beaming, 
When my little lamp was gleaming, 
And the feast was spread for thee, 

Lo ! my Master 
Was the guest that supped with me ! 

3. Another reason suggested by this narrative 
why our eyes are sometimes holden is because we 
refuse to recognize Christ in our circumstances. 
It was so with these disciples going to Emmaus ; 
Jesus himself was with them ; they did not know 



HOLDEN EYES. 259 

it, yet he was there. It is just as true that he is 
with you and me in all our circumstances. Our 
Lord Christ has a hand in our circumstances ; 
things do not fall to us from mere chance, but 
they are given because he sees that this is the 
best for us. We need to recognize that fact, in 
order to see him on the road with us — with us 
because we are walking the road where he goes, 
because that road is of his appointment. 

Nothing struck me more when I was in per- 
sonal contact with Mr. Spurgeon some time ago, 
than the way in which he spontaneously and con- 
stantly recognized Christ in everything that came 
to him. The sunshine was beautiful, because 
Christ sent it ; the chance for a little outing that 
he was taking with me was good, because Christ 
had given it to him ; and the duty, Christ had 
assigned it, and therefore it was done ; and the 
burden, Christ had appointed it, and therefore it 
was to be borne. When I came away, I felt as 
though I had been in a temple worshiping, be- 
cause his constant speech was about the Lord, 
and he seemed to know that everything which 
came to him was from the Lord's hand. His 



260 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

eyes were not holden, because he saw the Lord 
in his circumstances. 

Here is a little snatch my mother has often 
repeated to me : 

Just to trust, and yet to ask 

Guidance still ; 
Take the training or the task 

As he will ; 
Just to take the loss or gain 

As he sends it ; 
Just to take the joy or pain 
As he lends it. 
He who formed thee for his praise 
Will not miss his gracious aim ; 
So to-day and all thy days 
Shall be moulded for the same. 

Just to leave in his dear hand 

Little things ; 
All we cannot understand, 

All that stings ; 
Just to let him take the care, 

Sorely pressing. 
Finding all we let him bear 
Changed to blessing. 
This is all ! and yet the way 

Marked by him who loved thee best, 
Secret of a happy day, 
Secret of his promised rest 



HOLDEN EYES. 261 

When we thus recognize Christ in our circum- 
stances, our eyes will not be holden. Let us 
refuse to have such holden eyes ; it is possible to 
have eyes shining, eyes that do behold our Lord, 
by a more thorough study of his word, by a right 
treatment of sorrow, and by a reverent yet joyful 
recognition of him in our circumstances. So he 
will walk along the way with us just as he walked 
with the disciples going to Emmaus. We shall 
find our eyes clear; we shall have the joy and 
peace that came to those disciples when at last 
Jesus made himself known in the breaking of the 
bread. So let our talk this afternoon end with 
this prayer : 

Out of myself, dear Lord, 
Oh, lift me up ! 
No more I trust myself in life's dim maze, 
Sufficient to myself, in all its devious ways ; 
I trust no more, but humbly at thy throne 
Pray " Lead me, for I cannot go alone. "> 

Out of my weary self, 
Oh, lift me up ! 
I faint ; the road winds upward all the way ; 
Each night but ends another weary day. 
Give me thy strength, and may I be so blest, 
As on u the heights " I find the longed-for rest 



262 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Out of my selfish self, 
Oh, lift me up ! 
To live for others, and, in living so, 
To bear a blessing wheresoe'er I go ; 
To give the sunshine, and the clouds conceal, 
Or let them but the silver clouds reveal. 

Out of my lonely self, 
Oh, lift me up ! 
Though other hearts with love are running o'er, 
Though dear ones fill my lonely home no more, 
Though every day I miss the fond caress, 
Help me to join in others' happiness. 

Out of my doubting self, 
Oh, lift me up ! 
Help me to feel that thou art always near, 
E'en though 'tis night, and all around seems drear; 
Help me to know that, though I cannot see, 
It is my Father's hand that leadeth me. 



XXII. 

THE KINGDOM COMING WITH 
POWER. 

ON one occasion, after our Lord had been set- 
ting forth to some of his followers the terms 
of discipleship, he said (Mark 9 : 1) : " Verily I 
say unto you, That there be some of them that 
stand here, which shall not taste of death, till 
they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
power." That prophecy was fulfilled. The 
coming of God's kingdom with power meant the 
resurrection of our Lord and all that came from 
the resurrection, especially the bestowment of the 
Holy Spirit. And many lived to see that day. 

But there is also a very real meaning of this 
prophecy to you and to me ; namely : That our 
Lord's religion is not merely something to help 
us in the future, after we are dead. It is that ; 
but it is also to be for us now, in this present 
life, a strength and an illumination. 

263 



264 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Our Christian modes of thought often fail here. 
We think too much of going to heaven. We 
make too much of heaven, too much of it as a 
place, and not a state. Going to heaven is the 
fringe of being a Christian, not the thing itself. 
Palms, robes, golden gates, are the accidents of 
heaven. The real thing is purity of heart, satis- 
faction in the likeness of Christ, being in the 
presence of, and enjoying communion with, God. 
And with these come all the incidents that belong 
to them. 

Precisely as we think too much of heaven in 
the external sense, so we may think too much of 
getting there. What we should think of is the 
heavenly mind which we may have here, and 
all that belongs to the heavenly mind. We are 
not to relegate to the future what Christ can do 
for us here. We may hear Christ saying to us, 
in a very real sense, "There be some standing 
here, that shall not taste of death till they have 
seen the kingdom of God come with power." In 
the present life, there is divine power and help. 

What is there now for us in Christianity — at 
least in a seminal way ? 



THE KINGDOM COMING WITH POWER. 265 

1. One thing is the constant feeling of a Christ 
alive. We do not make enough of our Lord's 
resurrection. Think of the difference between 
Christ and every other being on our earth. I 
stood in the crypt under St. PauPs, before the 
tomb of Wellington. But he was not there, was 
not in the world. Only the ashes were left. His 
influence was in the world as a memory ; but his 
personal presence was not there, nor in London, 
nor in England. In Paris, I stood under the 
gilded dome, and looked on the sarcophagus of 
his antagonist, the great Napoleon. Everywhere 
were the memorials of Napoleon. There were 
the tattered flags that had gone waving on to vic- 
tory ; the names of his battles were inscribed in 
mosaic upon the pavement; and there were some 
tottering soldiers who had in their day followed 
him. But he was not there. 

For all the great, and for all who have lived, 
death has been a victor. How can a victory be 
greater than that which death now wields ? I 
have just come from a funeral. I saw the dead 
form of a wife, a mother, in her coffin. I laid her 
in the grave which, on such a day as this, seems 



266 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

» 

so awfully cold. What victory can be more 
complete ? 

But our Lord, in tasting death, vanquished 
death. We get help by his cross and by his res- 
urrection. We think too much of the cross, and 
not enough 'of the fact that he opened the gates 
of heaven to all believers. Nothing has so helped 
me as the consideration that my Christ is not a 
dead Christ. Nothing has so emphasized to me 
the might and majesty of his religion as the fact 
that he is death's Master — that he has shattered 
death's sceptre. 

2. We may have the constant and real ministry 
of the Holy Spirit. There is for each of us a 
present Christ. The fault I find with the pre- 
millennial doctrine is, that Christ is to come in a 
physical form, and to reign on a material local 
throne. How much better is the Dispensation of 
the Spirit ! I may have a spiritual Christ wher- 
ever I am, in sickness, in sorrow, in the flame. 
I am nearer to Christ than John was, even when 
he lay on Christ's bosom. Christ by the Holy 
Spirit comes into contact with my spirit — dwells 
in me. He is not reigning in Jerusalem. If he 



THE KINGDOM COMING WITH POWER. 267 

were, it would take me four weeks to get to him. 
But through the Spirit, I have a Christ here. 
You have, through the Spirit, a Christ with you 
in your housekeeping; in your care of the chil- 
dren ; everywhere. What more divine disclosure 
can there be than this ? We have, through the 
Holy Spirit, a Christ present with us. The old 
Shekinah was but in one place ; the new Sheki- 
nah shines everywhere, in every heart. 

Read the epistles, and see what weight is laid 
on this fact : " Ye are the temple of the Holy 
Spirit." What truth can more subdue and sanc- 
tify us than this, that we have in us this divine 
resident? The Holy Spirit is here, not there. 
Now, not then. 

3. And there may come to us a mighty motive. 
Have you read the " Life of Sister Dora " ? If 
you have not, I hope you will ; I do not know 
a more stimulating book. She devoted herself 
to doing good in the way of nursing. Her 
motive was Christ, for Christ's sake. Because 
she had this motive, she could do what she did. 
She endured labor without weariness ; she went 
through the most repulsive scenes without dis- 



268 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

gust ; she mingled with the coarse navvies, many 
of whom were her patients, without repugnance. 
She nourished her great soul, which ran out in 
great deeds, on Christ. 

It is the motive which God looks at, and 
which makes the deed. When I am asking my- 
self how I can live truly, how I can live a noble 
life, nothing so helps me as the fact that I may 
have Christ as my motive. So long as I have 
that motive, the expression of the motive may be 
mean ; but in the Lord's eyes, even the poorest 
work glows with a celestial light. 

4. We have also communion. The most real 
thing to a Christian ought to be the consciousness 
of the moments when he touches God. T cannot 
set this forth in language. As the heart knoweth 
its own bitterness, so it alone can know its own 
joy. There is no joy so deep as when we feel 
that we talk with God and God with us. This 
ought to be our usual experience. 

One Christian woman used to set aside an 
hour which she called "the Master's hour." 
She would open her Bible, and would ask God 
to shine on it ; she would hold her heart open 



THE KINGDOM COMING WITH POWER. 269 

before God, feeling that God knew and cared and 
directed. Each of us ought to have a Master's 
hour. Have you such an hour, a time when you 
go by yourself, and open yourself to God ? Do 
you know the great strength that comes out of 
it ? Our Lord had such an hour. Out of such 
communion came the Transfiguration. Out of it 
came (speaking on the human side) the wisdom 
to choose the twelve ; the power to endure in 
Gethsemane. All this communion is for you and 
me now. 

5. There is also for us a conscious joy. There 
is a difference between happiness and joy. Hap- 
piness is that which comes to us by hap, which 
happens to us from without. Joy is an internal 
spring. Christ does not promise happiness ; he 
does not say that all without shall be smiling, 
that there shall be no sorrow in the Christian's 
life. But he tells us that we shall have joy 
within us; that whatever may be without us, 
within there shall be a source of delight, the 
comfort of the Holy Spirit. This joy, this com- 
fort within us masters the outward circumstances. 

All this we may have now and here. We 



270 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

often quote those words of Paul, " Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
heart of man, the things which God hath pre- 
pared for them that love him," as if they referred 
to heaven ; but they do not refer to heaven at all ; 
they mean now : " God hath revealed them unto 
us by his Spirit." 

Some traveler reports that lie found in Africa 
a tribe who, in the midst of plenty, were starv- 
ing. The reason was that the lion had not 
killed anything lately. These people were 
accustomed to follow the lordly lion, and to eat 
what he had killed and left. And so they had 
lost the habit and power of pursuing and taking 
anything for themselves. Many Christians are 
like these degraded savages. There is plenty all 
about, but they do not take it, because they can- 
not ; and they cannot, because they would not. 

Recently, a man told me the story of his 
escape from Andersonville ; for days and days, 
he made his painful way, till at last he saw afar 
the Union flag ; it meant to him all that was high 
and noble ; but he was still within the lines of 
the enemy ; the people about him did not see that 



THE KINGDOM COMING WITH POWER. 271 

in it ; it was bis secret. We are among the 
worldly ; but we may know the secret of the Lord. 
All this is for us, not yonder, but here and now. 
Religion is not merely something to get to heaven 
by ; it is something to live by now. " Verily, I 
say unto you, that there be some standing here 
that shall not taste of death till they shall see the 
kingdom of God come with power." 



XXIII. 
HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER EVIL. 

I WILL ask you, this afternoon, to consider 
especially the lesson found in PauFs letter to 
the Ephesians 5:8: " For ye were sometime 
darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord : walk 
as children of light." 

The principle involved here is important and 
healthful. There are some persons who say that 
the world is getting worse and sinking to destruc- 
tion; that the work of Christ is practically a 
failure. I cannot see how any one with faith in 
Christ, or knowledge of history, can hold this 
view. Take, for example, this evil of intemper- 
ance ; many persons think that we are worse off 
than we were : I do not think so. In the Auto- 
biography of Dr. Goodell, prefixed to his Life, he 
tells us that seventy or eighty years ago a very 
godly minister used to pass his father's door and 
often stopped in to see the family. Once the 
272 



HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER EVIL, 273 

minister chanced to meet there the family physi- 
cian, and he asked his advice. He said : " I am 
about visiting the sick and the afflicted and the 
inquiring, and everywhere I am asked to take 
something to drink. I cannot decline without 
giving mortal offense ; but after a while I find 
myself growing dizzy, and I am afraid that I 
shall say or do something to disgrace myself. 
Now, what do you advise me to do about this ? '' 
The physician, after considering the matter very 
carefully, said : " You had better, when you find 
yourself growing a little dizzy, go home while 
you are able to walk; then sit down in your 
study until you feel that the effect has passed by ; 
and then start out again on the calls." The 
thought of abstaining never occurred to either of 
them ; the only thing was to drink without show- 
ing the effect of it. Everybody drank, and all 
seemed on the way to ruin. Things are going 
on better. No minister now, who went about 
among his people, drinking something here and 
there, could long continue a minister. 

This great evil prevailed in Ephesus. How 
was it to be overcome ? One way is the way of 



274 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

negation and restriction. There was much appar- 
ent training in the form of " Don't." There is 
much of this training now. We say to our chil- 
dren: "Don't," "Don't," "Don't"; and the 
boys and girls do not like to stay at home, be- 
cause they have had an avalanche of " Don't." 
The way of good resolutions was another way to 
triumph over sin ; but it was a dull, tasking way. 
Paul's way was different. This is his way : Get 
into yourself a better mind, so that you shall not 
want to do anything low or degrading. 

Now, I suppose that no one here is subject to 
this form of sin ; but the principle set forth is 
very helpful to us all. 

I suppose there are, perhaps, no persons more 
degraded — at any rate, I have seen none more 
degraded — than some of our North American 
Indians : dirty, lazy, crowded into their misera- 
ble tipis. Now, if one of them wants to rise, he 
may resolve to do so ; but it will be very hard 
while he is in these surroundings. But I have 
seen at Carlisle the young Indians who had 
thrown off the savage. When you see them you 
say : " We have struck it at last ; we have found 



HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER EVIL. 275 

how to change the Indian." We take the chil- 
dren of the leading Indians, and put into them a 
better mind, then send them back to their people 
to become centers of a better civilization. 

Here is a young artist who desires to fight 
against ugliness. Shall he do it by resolutions ? 
No. Let him go and study beauty; let him 
wait before great artists. His mind being filled 
with these, all that is ugly will be driven out. 
This is the principle of the Scriptures. The prin- 
ciple is : Be so filled with the better that you will 
not want to be overcome by the worse. 

Let us turn to the list of the fruits of the 

Spirit, as given in Galatians 5 : 22 : " But the 

fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffer- 

ing, gentleness, goodness, faith." Look at these 

fruits. Take peace : this means, as Miss Waring 

says, 

"A heart at leisure from itself." 

It means freedom from torturing anxiety. 

You say : " I have not this peace ; I am anx- 
ious. It is my nature to borrow trouble ; I cross 
bridges before I come to them ; I long for this 
fruit of the Spirit." So you gather up your 



276 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

powers when some trouble is coming, and you 
say : " I will not be anxious ; I will cast all on 
God " ; but you do not get peace. 

Take the other fruits. Take meekness and 
temperance, or patient self-control — self-control 
such that you are serene and sweet in your house- 
hold, so that you bring light wherever you are. 
You say : " The children bother me. My Sun- 
day-school class bothers me ; I think I shall give 
it up." " Now," you say, " I am going to with- 
stand the next temptation to impatience"; but 
the next time the temptation comes you are car- 
ried away before it. 

Take again, faith ; which means, perhaps, fidel- 
ity. You say : " I know that I ought to show 
fidelity in great things and in small, and I will 
do so"; but soon you say that you have failed. 

Now, this is not Paul's way. His way is: 
Get such a sense of God's presence that the nat- 
ural fruit of it shall be peace, patience, self-con- 
trol, and fidelity. 

But how may I be filled with the Spirit ? It 
is the glory of the Christian life that this may be, 
if we really want it so; we may so have this 



HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER EVIL. 277 

better mind that we shall not want to do any- 
thing evil, and thus shall be triumphant over 
the evil. 

We must believe in the Holy Spirit. Here is 
life for you in place of death ; and strength for 
you in place of weakness ; and holiness for you 
in place of sin. What you need is to know these 
things that you may act on them. 

Study the New Testament that you may know 
what God will do for you through the Holy 
Spirit. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit for 
peace and strength ? The reason we are so weak 
is that we are so ignorant of what God has done 
for us in himself. 

Let us know that the Spirit is near us, ready 
to enter our hearts. It is a wrong prayer that 
we sometimes offer, that the Holy Ghost may 
come down upon us, as if he were not near us, 
and ready to enter and fill our hearts always. If 
you would be filled with the Holy Spirit, kneel 
down and put away all that is evil, and consecrate 
yourself to him. 

Pray for the Holv Spirit. Pray that you may 
be filled with the Holy Spirit. There are some 



278 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

prayers in regard to which we have to say, " If it 
be thy will " ; but we know that it is God's will 
that we should be filled with the Spirit. Act on 
the Holy Spirit. Reckon on his strength. 

The children of Israel ventured on the word 
of God when they went into the Jordan. The 
river was full up to the banks until the very 
moment when the priests dipped their feet in the 
flood; then the waters stood still. We must 
depend on the promised Spirit. Act on the 
promises. Get yourself so filled with the Spirit 
that you shall not want to do what is not God's 
will. 

Gracious Spirit, dwell with me ; 
I myself would gracious be, 
And with words that help and heal, 
Would thy life in mine reveal, 
And with actions bold and meek, 
Would for Christ, my Saviour, speak. 

Truthful Spirit, dwell in me ; 
I myself would truthful be, 
And with wisdom kind and clear 
Let thy life in mine appear, 
And with actions brotherly 
Speak my Lord's sincerity. 



HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER EVIL 279 

Mighty Spirit, dwell with ine ; 
I myself would mighty be, 
Mighty so as to prevail 
Where unaided man must fail, 
Ever by a mighty hope 
Pressing on and bearing up. 

Holy Spirit, dwell with me ; 

I myself would holy be ; 

Separate from sin, I would 

Choose and cherish all things good, 

And whatever I can be 

Give to him, who gave me thee. 

Dear friends, all this is true. If we believed 
it more, it were better for us. We may have the 
fruits of the Spirit, peace, love, joy, temperance, 
meekness, if we will but believe toward the Spirit, 
pray toward the Spirit, act toward the Spirit. 

This is the way to overcome ; and may every 
one of us live as never before, so that the Spirit 
may fill us for Jesus' sake ! 



XXIV. 
THE TOMB OF JESUS. 

I KNOW of no thought that can so rob death 
of its terrors and make it even pleasant, as 
this fact, that he who is our Elder Brother has 
been through it before us. We must all go 
through an unknown country, by paths on whose 
sides mysteries stand thickly; but when we 
think of the tomb of Jesus, and think that he, 
our Elder Brother, has been there before us, we 
need not fear. What a complete and entire share 
he has with us in our nature and in our destiny ! 
Jesus has been there; and it is quite impossible 
that death should lead me anywhere where Jesus 
has not been. It is quite natural to shrink from 
death. People are much mistaken in thinking 
that one cannot be a Christian, and yet not want 
to die just now. " Dying grace is for dying 
times"; but when we think of the change, how 
comforting that " Jesus has lain there " ! 
280 



THE TOMB OF JESUS. 281 

1. The tomb of Jesus teaches us the certainty 
of the divine love for us. This is a lesson that 
we need to learn constantly, for so many things 
seem to clash with the idea of the love of God. 
On some beautiful April day, when the crocuses 
are beginning to open their yellow petals, and we 
know that we are in the vestibule of the spring, 
we are glad that the long, hard winter is behind 
us, and we can see evidences of the divine love. 
But it was verv hard to see evidences of the 
divine love in the blizzard, when the ministries 
of love must stop, because the people could not 
perform them. How may I, in all vicissitudes, 
be absolutely sure that God loves? There came 
to me once a very wonderful and real experience 
which helps me now when I do pastoral work 
and get into hard places where people fight the 
wolf from the door, yet barely do it, plying the 
needle every day. In Edinburgh, where the 
houses are built so close together that if you 
stand in the little alley between you can touch 
the houses on either side, and where they are 
piled up twelve stories high, and each story 
crammed with human beings, living; in filth and 



282 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

squalor and disease, I once made an exploration. 
It was the most terrible day I ever spent; it 
seemed to me as if all my faith were gone, and if 
any one had told me God loves people, I believe 
I should have felt like pointing at the people and 
saying: "Does that look like love?" While 
going on thinking about these things, I heard the 
scrape of a fiddle, not the playing of a fiddle ; 
and I turned and saw a little boy, his clothes 
neatly patched, though well worn out, and his 
shoes neatly blacked — at least his one shoe, for 
he had but one leg. I gave him a silver piece, 
and he looked as if he had never seen a silver 
piece before. His appearance told of a mother in 
those dark rooms trying to make her boy decent. 
And I thought : " If God loves men and women, 
how can he stand a thing like this ? This child 
has to fight through life with the disadvantage of 
one leg." And as I questioned, I saw a vision 
of Jesus Christ on the cross. I am not given to 
visions, but I saw one then. I saw the head 
drop and I heard a voice as plainly as ever I 
heard a voice, " The heart of God has broken." 
And from that vision I rose into a kind of jubi- 



THE TOMB OF JESUS. 283 

lance of faith, and I said: "God does love men, 
because Jesus Christ went down into death for 
them." 

2. The tomb of Jesus teaches us the value of 
merely passive service. Milton sang, " They 
also serve who only stand and wait." Sometimes 
I think it would be well if you, in this church, 
would only not keep me waiting so long for this 
thing and that thing ! It is the waiting side of 
the pastor's work which is the tough side ; it is 
not the serving side. It is a very blessed lesson, 
then, of the tomb of Jesus, that the best way is 
sometimes simply to "stand and wait." Christ, 
when he died, served best by passivity, and he 
did more good than he could have done by 
activity missing the passivity. Do not let wait- 
ing merge, however, into laziness ; it is simply 
when you cannot do, that you may remember that 
" they also serve who only stand and wait." 

3. This tomb of Jesus teaches us that what is 
in the tomb is not ourselves ; it is only our bodies. 
I have been saying, " Jesus lay there," but that 
is not true ; he did not lie there. You know he 
said to the thief, " To-day shalt thou be with me 



284 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

in paradise " ; and that day was Friday, and on 
that day Jesus and the thief were together in 
paradise. Now, I suppose that is the way it will 
be with us ; when we die, and the great change 
passes over us, we shall go into paradise. But 
what is paradise? We do not know; we only 
know that it is being with Christ, if we love him, 
and that it is a state of absolute blessedness. We 
know it is not the complete heaven, because there 
will not be a complete heaven until the resurrec- 
tion ; but we ourselves shall be after death where 
Jesus went, and paradise until the resurrection 
will be heaven ; we shall be with the Lord, and 
in rest complete. We shall be in companionship 
with one another, for Jesus was in companion- 
ship with others. The tomb holds only the body; 
it does not hold us. I do not have to lie in the 
tomb any more than Jesus had to lie there ; the 
body is only my house. I wish we could talk 
more according to the truth of things ; we do not 
bury people; we bury bodies. You say you 
have lost a child. Oh, no ! you have not lost a 
child ; the child is in paradise. Jesus was not in 
the tomb ; only his body was there. 



THE TOMB OF JESUS. 285 

4. That tomb teaches us that we cannot wait 
very long by it without going on into the thought 
of that tomb empty. As we wait by it, we can- 
not help seeing the light of the resurrection falling 
upon it, and the absolute annihilation of death. 
" He showed me a pure river of the water of life, 
clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of 
God and of the Lamb. On either side of the 
river was there the tree of life, and the leaves of 
the tree were for the healing of the nations." 
"And there shall be no more death." The 
crowning thought of this world is death, for 
death is the inevitable certainty. For husband 
and wife there is always the harrowing fear that 
one shall be taken and the other left. We are 
haunted here all the time by the certainty of 
death. But there is another world, and the 
crowning thought of that world is life — "the 
river of the water of life." For, see, our Lord 
Christ from paradise returns on the morning of 
the resurrection ; the tomb is empty and death is 
utterly annihilated. You trust Jesus, and you can 
take up the apostle's challenge, " O death, where 
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 



286 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

5. There is just another thing that we must 
think of by the tomb of Jesus : Because there is 
an empty tomb, we have a living Christ. Sup- 
pose my father should write me, "My son, I 
have determined to-morrow to do this thing for 
you, and that thiug for you, and the other thing 
for you," and I read the letter and say, " Father 
is very good and very kind." Don't you see that 
this promise of my father's is conditional upon 
his life. Suppose the day should come (and may 
God put far away that day!) and my father 
should have died ; then he could never make his 
promise good. Christ's promise is conditioned 
upon his living : and all his promises are true, 
because he is the master of death, and because 
death cannot in any wise intrude or interfere. 
The pure, great kaiser, in a kind of delirium at 
last, is reported as saying : " If Russia threatens 
me, I will be true to my Austria " ; but he died. 
But Jesus lives forevermore, and so we are abso- 
lutely sure of a living Christ as we wait here by 
the tomb of Jesus. This living Christ will take 
care of us ; let us trust him. 

Let us trust; do not be full of forebodings. 



THE TOMB OF JESUS. 2S? 

Let us often think of those women going to the 
tomb, on that morning, to make more sure, as 
love would have it, of the sepulchre cf Jesus. 
And they said, "Who shall roll us away the 
stone ?" Yet they kept on going; and, as it 
always is, the stone was rolled away. Although 
the path may be black, yet he is alive, and he 
will send his angel to roll away the stone, if we 
go on in the service of faith. 



That which weeping ones were saying 

Eighteen hundred years ago, 
We, the same weak faith betraying, 

Say in our sad hours of woe. 
Looking at some trouble lying 

In the dark and dread unknown, 
We too often ask with sighing, 

11 Who shall roll away the stone ? " 

Thus, with care our spirits crushing, 

When they might from care be free, 
And, in joyous song outgushing, 

Rise in rapture, Lord, to thee. 
For, before the day was ended, 

Oft we've had with joy to own 
Angels have from heaven descended, 

And have rolled away the stone. 



288 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Many a storm-cloud sweeping o'er us 

Never pours on us its rain ; 
Many a grief we see before us 

Never comes to cause us pain. 
Ofttimes, in the feared to-morrow, 

Sunshine comes — the cloud is flown ; 
Ask not, then, in foolish sorrow, 

" Who shall roll away the stone ?" 

Burden not thy soul with sadness ; 

Make the wiser, better choice ; 
Drink the wine of life with gladness, 

God doth bid the man, " Rejoice ! " 
In to-day's bright sunlight basking, 

Leave to-morrow's cares alone ; 
Spoil not present joys by asking : 

" Who shall roll away the stone ? M 



XXV. 

STRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 

THAT is very significant praise in the One 
Hundred and Thirty-eighth Psalm, whi^h 
David offers to God, in these words : " In the day 
when I cried thou answerest me, and strength- 
enedst me with strength in my soul/' And I 
do not know of any gift that any of us need 
more than just this gift, "Strength in one's soul." 
We are frequently anxious for better and more 
shining circumstances ; but the true need is not 
any change of circumstance, but change of inward 
self. We shall never in this world be surrounded 
by circumstances that precisely suit us ; for, no 
matter in what position we may be, we can 
always suggest some improvement. 

Ahab, looking out of his palace window, sees 
the little plot of ground which was Naboth's 
vineyard, and finds the lines of his grounds are 
orooked, because that vineyard is in the way ; 

T 289 



290 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

and he is displeased. So it is with us all : what- 
ever the prospect, there is some spot to mar ; and 
this one defect seems so dark as to make us focus 
our gaze upon it, and forget the light. So what 
we need is not so much change of circumstance, 
as change of self. If we had such faith in God 
as David had, it would be a great thing for us. 
On the seashore, some summer day, we see fre- 
quently cast up by the waves a great mass of sea 
weed. It goes where the tide leaves it, and has 
no power of resistance ; it is the mere sport of 
circumstances. But there, on the shore, we see, 
jutting out into the water, some huge rock, 
which, though battered by the waves never so 
much, is strong against the waves, because it has 
a certain power in itself. If the day be stormy, 
and the tempest be let loose, still that rock stands 
firm, the master of circumstances, because it has 
power within itself. 

And we are true men and women in propor- 
tion as we are, instead of the subjects, the mas- 
ters of circumstances. And we can never be 
that until we can, like David, say : " Thou 
strengthenedst me with strength in my soul." 



STRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 291 

Now, that aged monarch, lying dead there in 
Berlin to-day, is one of the most remarkable 
instances of a strong soul in this century. It is 
very interesting to look over the history of his 
life, and see how, his mother fleeing from Napo- 
leon I., and their carriage breaking down, they 
sat by the roadside, and the mother sang to her 
children, then bade them go into the cornfield 
and pluck the little blue flowers which he, always 
after, had pictured in his room as long as he 
lived. I think you rarely ever find one so self- 
centered as he, and so much the master of cir- 
cumstances. And at the last, as always follows, 
he found circumstances flowing to his touch, and 
he molded them to suit himself. He was master 
always, and not slave. Well, I think, surrounded 
by our circumstances, what we most need is 
not, perhaps, such strength of soul as that, but 
specially religious strength. And yet I believe 
the grand old kaiser had religious strength too; 
I believe he was a devout Christian. 

We all need strength of soul, and we are mis- 
erably poor without it. 

We need it in prosperity, though we are apt 



292 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

to think otherwise. I have seen in many cases 
that, as the thermometer of social and worldly 
advantages rose higher, the thermometer of spir- 
itual power sank down to zero. It is one of the 
saddest facts that God's goodness, instead of 
leading to repentance, so often leads to forgetful- 
ness of him. A man does not think, perhaps, as 
his business is increasing, or a woman, as she 
finds herself cushioned in better circumstances, 
that now special strength is needed that the soul 
shall not lose its hold on God, and begin to trust 
itself. When this happens, the soul gets weaker 
and weaker still. 

We need this strength in adversity, when we 
are under chastisement. Please remember a dis- 
tinction I have often made here: the distinction 
between chastisement and punishment. We must 
not think, if we are really Jesus Christ's, that we 
are punished. God does not punish Christians, 
for Jesus Christ has been punished in their stead. 
Punishment is the infliction of penalty, and looks 
law-ward. Chastisement looks not law-ward, 
but culture- ward. We must have chastisement. 
" Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speak- 



STRENGTH IN OUK SOUL, 293 

eth unto you as unto children : My son, despise 
not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint 
when thou art rebuked of him : for whom the 
Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, 
God dealeth with you as with sons, for what son 
is he whom the father chasteneth not? . . . 
Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh 
which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; 
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto 
the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily 
for a few days chasteneth us after their own 
pleasure ; but he for our profit, that we might be 
partakers of his holiness." (Hebrews 12 : 5-10.) 
So if we would be partakers of the divine holi- 
ness, we need chastisement. And we need 
strength of soul to endure it, remembering that 
it is a sign of God's love, and comes from his 
hand. And surely we shall need strength of 
soul in time of death. I have just come from 
the funeral of an aged sister, one of the sweetest 
souls. For a year past, she has been lying under 
the lingering shadows of disease as well as of age. 
She met death in one of the sweetest ways that 



294 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

ever I ^v. i Christian meet it. When I asked 
her if she , ad any fear whatever, she said : "No; 
I want to go. I am only waiting for the sum- 
mons." She said she had the most complete 
trust in Jesus Christ. Jesus had said he would 
take care of her, and that was enough. She 
w r ent at last in the , quietness of a beautiful sleep. 
Surely, when our time comes, we shall need 
strength in our souls. 

Now, the question arises, how can we have 
this strength of soul? I am very sure we must 
make the old answer: "We get this inward 
strength b\ faith." Only let us be sure that we 
understand what faith means. It is believed 
that David wrote this psalm full of praise at the 
time when he had had a distinct revelation made 
to him that his house should endure through his 
sons, and in the person of Jesus Christ, who 
should come uut of his loins ; even as was fore- 
told by the mouth of the prophet Nathan : "And 
when thy days shall be fulfilled, I will set up 
thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of 
thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. 
And thine house and thy kingdom shall be estab- 



TRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 295 

lished forever before thee ; thy throne shall be 
established forever." It is believed that David 
uttered this praise when God had uttered these 
promises to him of the blessings that should come 
to his seed in the person of the Messiah. Why, 
he simply believed what God said, and there 
came into his heart strength, because he could lay 
grip on something, and was supported by it, and 
so was strong. But we are constantly mistaking 
faith for a kind of ecstasy. Faith is not feeling; 
it is assent of the intellect to what God has said. 
When you believe precisely as David believed, 
you will be strong. Why should not David feel 
strong when God had promised ? We are apt, 
when something difficult comes, to gird ourselves 
up and say : u Now, I must be strong" ; but we 
find it desperately hard work, and finally per- 
haps strength fails and we are overcome. Just 
when our own strength fails, we can resist if we 
can get something on which to lean. We have 
something on which to lean : it is God's word. 
You need not be lifted into some abnormal expe- 
rience, in order to have faith, although such an 
experience may come, as the result of faith. 



296 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

David believes, and, believing, has strength to 
meet all the doubt and all the wonder and all 
the mists and all the future history of himself 
and of all his house. Now, this is faith, and 
this is the way to be strong. There is something 
voti can lean on ; it is what God declares to vou 
in his word. The reason why we are Christians 
of so little faith is because we know so little of 
what God has for us. God's book is full of the 
sweetest, richest promises for them, yet they do 
not know it. Dear friends, we cannot be Chris- 
tians of strong soul if we do not have more knowl- 
edge of God's word. Believe that the Scrip- 
tures are written for us, and take hold of them 
by faith. When vou are troubled, instead of look- 
ing into the faces of your troubles, you should 
just adopt God's way, the way of faith ; should 
turn over the Scriptures, and read such passages 
as this: "All things shall work together for good 
to them that love God," and believe it. 

I stood a thousand feet above the level of the 
sea in the Yellowstone National Park. The 
great mountains and the geysers and the prairies 
and the sweet lake and the river were all within 



STRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 297 

the horizon of my vision. And so you and I 
can never get into such trouble that we shall be 
out of the horizon of God's love. All things 
shall work together for good. You need not 
doubt whether God means blessing to you in this 
or that grim experience. Now, suppose that, 
instead of nerving yourself to meet some trouble, 
you should determine to believe the promise and 
keep hold of it. That is the way to get strong, 
for faith is a grip on God's promise. I wish I 
could get that miserable notion out of my own 
head and out of yours, that faith is a sort of 
ecstasy. 

Another way to get this inward strength is to 
use a promise as an argument in prayer. When 
you use a promise as an argument, and when 
you really pray a promise, then you increase 
your grip, and that increase of grip reacts upon 
you, and you feel stronger and stronger inwardly. 
David used this promise in his prayer : " For 
thou, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast re- 
vealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee a 
house : therefore hath thy servant found in his 
heart to pray this prayer unto thee. And now, 



298 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

O Lord God, thou art that God, and thy words 
be true, and thou hast promised this goodness 
unto thy servant : Therefore let it please thee to 
bless the house of thy servant, that it may con- 
tinue forever before thee: for thou, O Lord God, 
hast spoken it." Here God had promised this 
thing, and David now uses this promise as an 
argument. 

I may have mentioned it before, but it always 
used to impress me strongly. I have been with 
Mr. Spurgeon a great deal, and I have looked at 
him, and have said : "How can you be so easy ? 
There is your orphanage, and there is your col- 
lege, and there is your old women's home, and 
there is that tremendous congregation, and you 
have all to take care of." But he says : " What 
is the use of being bothered ? I always pray 
about it." And I ask him : "Well, how do you 
pray?" And he answers: "I always get hold 
of a promise, and I pray about it, and so I get 
inward strength." The trouble with us is, we 
do not pray promises much; we pray inward 
desires. It is a tremendous power when you can 
say: "O Lord Jesus, thou hast promised this 



STRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 299 

thing, and this thing covers my desires." I 
remember some years ago I determined to pray 
about a particular thing from the promise, 
"Whatsoever thou shalt ask the Father in my 
name, he will give it you." And so I got ever 
so much inward strength. The Lord loves to be 
held with the close grip of our faith, for he will 
never deny his word. 

Then, also, we shall have inward strength in 
proportion as we use the strength we have. You 
have ever so much loose strength lying around 
that you have never used. There are ever so 
many people, for instance, who have gifts of real 
talent for the Lord ; but they will not use them. 
If we only lived up to the strength we have, we 
should find we had far more than we supposed, 
and that strength would be immenselv increased. 
And so, by using strength you will get strength. 

Another way in which we can get strength in 
our souls is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
Always the spring seems like a miracle. I go 
into the park and see the little nodules of buds 
here and there along the sprays, and not the sug- 
gestion of a leaf, all being closely folded in and 



300 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

fastened by the glue ; and if I cut one of the buds 
I find there is a little moisture, but very slight. 
Yet, in the beautiful days ahead of us, that little 
bud will throw off its blanket of down, and un- 
furl more and more, until suddenly you shall find 
that the whole tree is in utmost leafage, and the 
glory of the spring and summer is upon them. 
But the little leaf does not have to do it of him- 
self. From the sun comes the heat ray and the 
chemical ray and the light ray ; and these rays 
start the bud and give it life. God is not ninety- 
two millions of miles aw r ay ; God is better to us 
than the sun to the earth, because he is closer to 
us. The very God himself dwells in us if we 
will have it so ; and dwelling in us, he will make 
us stroug. 

Years ago, somebody came to me, troubled 
about her fiery temper. She could not control it, 
though she had tried many resolutions, but would 
slip up now and then, till, in despair, she said, 
"O Lord Jesus, I cannot do it myself, but I 
consecrate this temper to thee. Come in and 
give me strength." And that prayer was an- 
swered. The Holy Spirit did enter and dwell 



STRENGTH IN OUR SOUL. 301 

with her, and somehow or other as if, on a hot 
day in midsummer, the very coolness and fresh- 
ness of some mountain ravine had come into her 
and calmed her, and she became soft and sweet 
of speech and absolutely triumphant, because the 
Lord had strengthened her in her soul, since she 
had opened her soul for the indwelling of his 
Holy Spirit. 

Let us endeavor to believe what God has said ; 
let us use his promises as arguments ; then let us 
use the strength we have ; and let us more than 
all and beyond all, open our hearts for the 
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and we shall be 
strengthened with strength in our souls. 

Father, before thy footstool kneeling, 
Once more my heart goes up to thee : 

For aid, for strength, to thee appealing, 
Thou who alone can'st succor me. 

Hear me ! for heart and flesh are failing, 

My spirit yielding in the strife ; 
And anguish, wild as unavailing, 

Sweeps in a flood across my life. 

Help me to stem the tide of sorrow. 

Help me to bear thy chastening rod ; 
Give me endurance, let me borrow 

Strength from thy promise, my God ! 



302 SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

Not mine the grief which words may lighten ; 

Not mine the tears of common woe ; 
The pang with which my heart strings tighten 

Only the All-seeing One may know. 

And I am weak ; my feeble spirit 

Shrinks from life's task in wild dismay ; 

Yet not that thou that task wouldst spare it, 
My Father, do I dare to pray. 

Into my soul thy might infusing, 

Strengthening my spirit by thine own ; 

Help me — all other aid refusing — 
To cling to thee and thee alone. 

And oh ! in my exceeding weakness, 
Make thy strength perfect : thou art strong 

Aid me to do thy will with meekness, 
Thou to whom all my powers belong. 

Saviour ! our human form once wearing, 
Help, by the memory of that day, 

When painfully thy dark cross bearing, 
E'en for a time thy strength gave way. 

Beneath a lighter burden sinking, 

Jesus, I cast myself on thee ; 
Forgive, forgive, this useless shrieking 

From trials that I know must be. 

Oh ! let me feel that thou art near me ; 

Close to thy side, I shall not fear. 
Hear me, Strength of Israel ! hear me ; 

Sustain and aid ! in mercy, hear ! 



NOV 6 1899 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

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